2015-07-09 11:03:10

by Jan Engelhardt

Subject: Retain all bits of the exit(2) status value

I was made aware of a suggested change to POSIX's exit function.
Current issue 7:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/exit.html
Proposed change:
http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=594#c1317
In summary:
from "the least significant 8 bits (that is, status & 0377)"
to "the full value shall be available from waitid()"

Now, Linux currently does a & 0xff in kernel/exit.c in the exit and
exit_group syscalls. I would expect that the proposed change requires a
new system call, and if so, what should its name be?