How to get the return value of a program ran via calling a member of the exec family of functions?

Question

I know that it is possible to read commands output with a pipe? But what about getting return value ? For example i want to execute:

execl("/bin/ping", "/bin/ping" , "-c", "1", "-t", "1", ip_addr, NULL);

How can i get returned value of ping command to find out if it returned 0 or 1?

Answer 1

Here is an example I wrote long time ago. Basically, after you fork a child process and you wait its exit status, you check the status using two Macros. WIFEXITED is used to check if the process exited normally, and WEXITSTATUS checks what the returned number is in case it returned normally:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
int main()
{
    int number, statval;
    printf("%d: I'm the parent !\n", getpid());
    if(fork() == 0)
    {
        number = 10;
        printf("PID %d: exiting with number %d\n", getpid(), number);
        exit(number) ;
    }
    else
    {
        printf("PID %d: waiting for child\n", getpid());
        wait(&statval);
        if(WIFEXITED(statval))
            printf("Child's exit code %d\n", WEXITSTATUS(statval));
        else
            printf("Child did not terminate with exit\n");
    }
    return 0;
}