whiptail manpage says exit code -1 not 255

[Brian Candler]

Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Release: 12.04
whiptail 0.52.11-2ubuntu10

whiptail(1) says the following:

DIAGNOSTICS
       Exit status is 0 if whiptail is exited by pressing the Yes or OK but‐
       ton, and 1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed. Otherwise, if errors
       occur inside whiptail or whiptail is exited by pressing the ESC key,
       the exit status is -1.

However it's not possible for a Unix process to return exit status -1. It returns 255, as confirmed by

whiptail --yesno Wibble? 7 50; echo $?

then hit ESC.

[Javier López (javier-lopez)]

I can confirm this in upstream, debian and ubuntu versions, I've added a comment to a debian related report which list other
inaccuracies in the man page, I'd suggest waiting for the changes coming from Debian (and from them to go to upstream), since it's not a critical problem.
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Thomas Ward (teward)]

Marked as "Triaged" status, and "Low" importance, per the request of Javier P.L. (chilicuil)