Re: timeout fix for linux

Keresztfalvi Laszlo:
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> The man timeout page says:
> "timeout's exit status is the exit status of the specified command
> or 1 in case of a usage error."
> 
> My problem was that the executed command failed with exit value other than 0 (eg. sqlplus 
> and 174) in time. But timeout returned 0, so the script assumed the call was successful. I 
> only touched the code of the returned value surrounding status with the appropriate macro.
> 
> Sure, it may interfere when the command also returns -1 or 255 but these values usually 
> means fatal, unknown errors without useful meanings. I think this is not a problem (at 
> least the problem remains problem), while reporting success instead of failure is danger.
> 
> That's all. I thought others may also assume the above operation.. Feel free to include or 
> drop.

The original code loses a non-zero command exit status and does
report whether the command was killed due to a signal.

Your patch keeps the non-zero command exit status and loses that
the command was killed due to a signal.

Your patch replaces one bug by another, and that is not progress.

I sent someone a diff last week that reports the command's non-zero exit
status, and that also returns a nonzero exit status when the
command was terminated by a signal.

The line in question is:

    return (pid == child_pid ? WEXITSTATUS(status) | WTERMSIG(status) : -1);

It's not pretty but at least it does not lose information.

	Wietse