[Problem] test_must_fail makes possibly questionable assumptions about exit_code.

Hi all,

After months of arguing with some platform developers on this subject, the perl spec was held over my head repeatedly about a few lines that are causing issues. The basic problem is this line (test-lib-functions.sh, line 633, still in ffa952497)

128)):

According to the perl spec http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/die.html, die basically takes whatever errno is, mods it with 256 and there you go. EBADF is what is used when perl reads from stdin and calls die - that's standard perl. In most systems, you end up with something useful, when EBADF is 9. But when it is 4009, you get a garbage answer (4009 mod 256 a.k.a. 169). However, only 128-165 are technically reserved for signals, rather than all the way up to 192, which may be true in some places but not everywhere.

The advice (I'm putting that nicely) I received was to use exit so that the result is predictable - unlikely to be useful in the 15K test suites in git. However, dropping this to 165 conditionally might help.

I'm looking for what approach to take here, because I don't think I'm going to get perl fixed any time soon, or the error number range on the platform fixed ... ever.

This is causing only two breaks that I have lived with and probably still could. Consider me begging for a suggestion.

Sincerest, Randall

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 NonStop developer since approximately 211288444200000000
 UNIX developer since approximately 421664400
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