What should I do to get the whole return value of c-program from command line?

Question

I have a simple C-program "./my_program"

#include <stdio.h>

int main (int argc , char **argv) {


   unsigned int return_result = 0x474;
   printf("return_result = %d = 0x%x \n",return_result,return_result);
   return return_result;

}

As a result, this program prints:

return_result = 1140 = 0x474 

I want to get a return value of c-program within bash script. According to this link Anyway to get return value of c program from command line? I should get this variable from $?

But when I launch such commands consequence:

./my_program
echo $?

I get

116

It is obviously, that 116 = 0x74 (the lowest byte). But I'd like to get the whole unsigned int value. What is wrong? What should I do to get the whole return value of c-program from command line? This is not about only "unsigned int" type. What should I do in case if I created some complicated type, for example, - structure.

I tried this:

return ((unsigned int) return_result_section_size);

It doesn't work.

Answer 1

Exit codes on Unix are restricted to a single byte. If you want to output more, you could write it to stdout or to a file instead.

Then why does the C standard decree that main returns int and not char? I have no idea...