I have a perl script that is run with a command like this:

/path/to/binary/executable | /path/to/perl/script.pl

The script does useful things to the output for the binary file, then exits once STDIN runs out (<> returns undef). This is all well and good, except if the binary exits with a non-zero code. From the script's POV, it thinks the script just ended cleanly, and so it cleans up, and exits, with a code of 0.

Is there a way for the perl script to see what the exit code was? Ideally, I'd want something like this to work:

# close STDIN, and if there was an error, exit with that same error.
unless (close STDIN) {
   print "error closing STDIN: $! ($?)\n";
   exit $?;
}

But unfortunately, this doesn't seem to work:

$ (date; sleep 3; date; exit 1) | /path/to/perl/script.pl /tmp/test.out
Mon Jun  7 14:43:49 PDT 2010
Mon Jun  7 14:43:52 PDT 2010
$ echo $?
0

Is there a way to have it Do What I Mean?