[SOLVED] Does pclose() return pipe's termination status shifted left by eight bits on all platforms?

Does pclose() return pipe's termination status shifted left by eight bits on all platforms?

I found on Centos4 that the man page for popen() states in part:

DESCRIPTION
   The  pclose()  function shall close a stream that was opened by popen(), wait for the command to termi-
   nate, and return the termination status of the process that was running  the  command  language  inter-
   preter.   However, if a call caused the termination status to be unavailable to pclose(), then pclose()
   shall return -1 with errno set to [ECHILD] to report this situation.

However, in my C++ application, when I actually execute the code, I see that the termination status is shifted left by 8 bits. Perhaps this is to distinguish a -1 from the pipe's termination status from pclose()'s own exit status of -1?

Is this portable behavior? Why doesn't the man page mention this? If not portable, which platforms conform to this behavior?

Solution

Just to add some code to shooper's answer above, you may want to do something on the lines of this:

#include <sys/wait.h>

//Get your exit code...
int status=pclose(pipe);

//...and ask how the process ended to clean up the exit code.
if(WIFEXITED(status)) {
    //If you need to do something when the pipe exited, this is the time.
    status=WEXITSTATUS(status);
}
else if(WIFSIGNALED(status)) {
    //If you need to add something if the pipe process was terminated, do it here.
    status=WTERMSIG(status);
}
else if(WIFSTOPPED(status)) {
    //If you need to act upon the process stopping, do it here.
    status=WSTOPSIG(status);
}

Other than that, add elegance as needed.