ghc 6.0.1 win98 System.system too successful?

[Claus Reinke]

> On Windows, Hugs' implementation of System.system always returns ExitSuccess 
> because the Windows routine it calls doesn't return a useful exit status.

Thanks, I hadn't noticed before, but you're right: Hugs suffers from the same bug.

> My very vague memory from looking into this some years back was that DOS 
> programs don't have a consistently interpreted exit status the way Unix 
> programs do and use some kind of out-of-band communication to indicate 
> failure to the caller.

Assuming this is the cause of the bug, shouldn't ghc's/hugs' implementation
of System.system on Windows98 make use of this out-of-band communication
(which would then seem to be the standard usage pattern on this platform), in 
order to provide a more useful exit status in our Haskell programs?

Cheers,
Claus