SELECT pg_reload_conf(); returning true despite hba file loading was failed

I came across this situation, where I was allowing some new ip-address to connect to the database. But while making the change in the hba file i added a invalid character by mistake. And i reloaded using the pg_reload_conf function, it returns true. I thought everything was fine, until the client people reported that they were still not able to login to the database.

After checking the logs, I found out that the hba file was not loaded successfully because of the invalid character. My concern is why pg_reload_conf is returning true if the load was unsuccessful.  

Is there any option to check if the load is successful or not, without going through the logs?

PostgreSQL 10.15 (Ubuntu 10.15-0ubuntu0.18.04.1)

postgres=# select pg_reload_conf();
 pg_reload_conf
----------------
 t

In logs below error was reported:

line 45 of configuration file ""/******************/pg_hba.conf"""

LOG,00000,"pg_hba.conf was not reloaded",,,,,,,,"SIGHUP_handler, postmaster.c:2642",""   \