RFC 220 (v1) wait() and waitpid() should return false on failure

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  http://dev.perl.org/rfc/


=head1 TITLE

wait() and waitpid() should return false on failure

=head1 VERSION

  Maintainer: Nathan Torkington <[email protected]>
  Date: Sep 13 2000
  Mailing List: [email protected]
  Number: 220
  Version: 1
  Status: Developing

=head1 ABSTRACT

All system calls in Perl should return false on failure.

=head1 DESCRIPTION

wait() and waitpid() return -1 on failure.  They should
return C<undef>, and return C<"0 but true"> if the system call
returned 0.

=head1 IMPLEMENTATION

Straightforward.  The perl526 translator simply wraps the perl6 wait()
and waitpid():

  do { my $r = waitpid(...); return -1 if !defined $r;
       return 0 if !$r; $r }

=head1 REFERENCES

the perlfunc manpage for information on waitpid() and wait()