Problems with execlp

[johnnytheswede]

I'm having a program which I'll call C here starting another program which I'll call P here. I do it through having C fork()ing off a child who calls execlp() to start P. And I am interested in the exit code of the program P I'm starting. However, execlp() does not fail to start the other program P and hence execlp() returns nothing. I'm interested in various ways to get hold of that exit code of P and wait() (and waitX()) does not do it so I have been thinking of writing a bash-wrapper, basically a bash-script that gets called by C and which, in its turn, starts P, checks what P returns and then sends a signal to the caller C depending on the exit code of P, however, this involved sending the process ID of the caller C to the wrapper and having the wrapper send a signal back to the caller C and having a signal handler in the caller C and churn churn churn... I'm thinking perhaps there is a better way.

Thank you
Johnny

[the_unforgiven]

What's wrong in using wait()?
Did you read the man page of wait() (man 2 wait)?

This is the standard way in UNIX to get the return status of the child process.
In fact, even the shell is going to do the same thing.