For normal termination, this status also includes the exit code (usually an integer value) that the process returned to the system.
During the first 20 years of UNIX, only the low 8 bits of the exit code were available to the waiting parent.
Under normal operation it will typically be immediately waited on by its parent, and then reaped by the system, reclaiming the resource (the process table entry).
Such situations are typically handled with a special "reaper" process[citation needed] that locates zombies and retrieves their exit status, allowing the operating system to then deallocate their resources.
[citation needed] Hence it is sometimes needed to check the argument set by wait, waitpid or waitid and, in the case that WIFSIGNALED is true, wait for the child process again to deallocate resources.