Confusing documentation about system(3) in 4.3BSD?

[Roy Smith]

ron at topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie) writes:
> You're confusing shell exit status (to itself) and the process
> exit status available to C programs (via wait).

	The point is, if you read the man pages (including wait(2)), you can't
help but get confused.  Why?  Because there are two different things being
discussed (shell-type exit codes where the argument to exit(2) is available
directly and wait-type exit codes where the argument to exit(2) is up-shifted
a byte) but the same terms are used haphazardly to refer to either or both.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016