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From: Eduardo =?iso-8859-1?Q?A=2E_Bustamante_L=F3pez?= <dualbus@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug
Subject: Re: Special parameter ?
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2018 08:17:33 -0700
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To: Enrique Soriano <esoriano@gsyc.urjc.es>
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On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 04:17:11PM +0200, Enrique Soriano wrote:
> > You're seeing the status from the creation of the background job (which is
> > always 0), not from its completion.
> 
> Ah, I see.
> 
> Anyway, the behavior is not coherent with the manual page: in this
> case, $? has the status from the creation of the background job,
> that's not "the status of the most recently executed foreground
> pipeline".

The thing that creates the background job IS a foreground pipeline. It's a foreground pipeline that creates a background
job, if that makes sense.

dualbus@ubuntu:~$ cat t.sh
(exit 2)
(exit 3) & pid=$!
echo $?
wait "$pid"
echo $?

dualbus@ubuntu:~$ bash t.sh
0
3

I recommend to store the value of $? in a variable if you plan on using it afterwards, since it's extremely easy to end
up overriding its value.