Forgetting to reap zombies is a real production failure mode: Docker containers running a shell script as PID 1 famously accumulate zombies until the process table fills, which is why `tini` and `dumb-init` exist solely to call wait() on behalf of orphaned children. The WIFEXITED/WEXITSTATUS bit-packing you implement here is exactly the encoding `bash`'s `$?` and `git`'s exit-code checks rely on.