Author: Unknown
Subject: pipe true and false
Date: Friday, 11 Dec 2020, 21:17:50

The spec says
> reporting the status of the last simple command, pipeline, conditional command, or subcommand executed by setting the environment variable $? to its "printed" value (e.g., the string "0" if the value is zero).

In the staff solution:

$ echo hi | sfdsfd 
$ printenv ?
2

But also

$ sfdsfd | echo hi
$ printenv ?
2

Why wouldn't I expect the second one to be 0? sfdsfd is an unknown file. 

If the first non-zero error message is supposed to be returned then what explains this?

$ sfdsfd | sfdsfd | echo hi
$ printenv ?
2

$ sfdsfd | sfdsfd | test
$ printenv ?
1 

Where "test" is a known file. "test" by itself returns 1 and "echo hi" by itself returns 0