Using bash-1.14.7-11 and bash-1.14.7-13 /bin/bash will exit with a status of 1 rather than 0. I believe this is incorrect behavior. /bin/bash -c exit; echo $? or if /bin/bash -c exit; then echo 'Good' else echo 'Bad' fi illustrates the problem. The problem was noticed when I attempted to configure perl5.005_03 Trial 3 and it warned me "It would appear you have a defective bash shell installed... Upgrading to a recent version (1.14.4 or later) should fix the problem."
doing /bin/bash -c exit; echo $? returned a 0 in bash-1.14.7-14.i386.rpm as reported is the proper way by user.