On Wed, 2012-01-04 at 08:51 -0600, Thrall, Bryan wrote: > Perhaps the OP was looking for something like apropos or whatis? > > <snip/>
In this case, the OP was simply using "head" as an example to show how piping the output of man was generating an unexpected error. As you all know, Unix is rich in text processing tools, so it shouldn't be a surprise that one might want to do some processing of man output. Further experimentation with piping man output suggests that the error presents itself when the process receiving the man output stream terminates (as with head) before man is done writing it. --Ken Nellis
