From: barjunk <barjunk@...>
Date: 2007-04-12T02:35:09+09:00
Subject: More 'system call' troubleshooting

Something that isn't mentioned in the Ruby manual online (http://
www.rubycentral.com/book/ref_m_kernel.html#Kernel.system) is that the
entire path is needed as well.

Of course, that is a best practice, but I spent some time working
through this as an issue.

Additionally, I wrote a short test.sh script that does an exit with a
value.  The command I used in ruby was:

retval = system("/path/to/test.sh")

when this is run the values for 'retval' and $? are as follows:

#exit 0  -> true $?=0
#exit 1  -> false $?=256
#exit 2  -> false $?=512
#exit 3  -> false $?=768
#exit 4  -> false $?=1024
#exit 5  -> false $?=1280
#exit -1 -> false $?=65280

Can anyone explain the $? values?  It is supposed to contain a
'detailed error code'.

By the looks of it, some sort of multiple of 256.

Mike B.