RE: $! after using backticks

[Peter Cornelius]

>I want to check that a backtick command has executed OK. I thought I could
>do that by looking at the $! variable. 

Check $?
This is Child exit status which is what you get when you spawn another
process with back ticks.

The $! is the ERRNO (or Error string depending on context) for the last
system call.

Hope this helps,
Peter C.