Why does this exit function add two zeros at the end in C?

Question

Hey so i made a program for university in C and the child should exit with hex 0xAA but it also adds two zeros at the end? Why does it do that? Am i overseeing something?

pid_t cpid;
int status;
cpid = fork();
if (cpid==-1){
    return -1;
}
else if(cpid==0){
    pid_t pid_child = getpid();
    pid_t ppid_child = getppid();
    printf("ChildProcessID from Child: %d\n",pid_child);
    printf("ParentProcessID from Child: %d\n",ppid_child);
    exit(0xAA);
}
else{
    printf("ChildProcessID: %d\n",cpid);
    wait(&status);
    printf("Exit Status Child: %#X\n",status);
}

at the end where it should output

Exit Status Child: 0XAA

it puts out

Exit Status Child: 0XAA00

I am sorry if anything is formatted wrongly or forgot anything. This is my first post on here. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

When wait returns, the given parameter contains additional information besides just the exit code. It also tells you whether or not the process terminated normally.

There are macros you can use to extract the relevant parts:

wait(&status);
if (WIFEXITED(status)) {
    printf("Exit Status Child: %#X\n",WEXITSTATUS(status));
} else if (WIFSIGNALED(status)) {
    printf("Child exited abnormally via signal %d\n", WTERMSIG(status));
} else {
    printf("Something else happened\n");
}