Julian Gilbey wrote: > I can't find much rhyme or reason to this one. ls | head or ls -l | > head sometimes dies with a broken pipe, but other times it doesn't.
Your report sounds like the classic problem of what happens when people ignore SIGPIPE in the shell. Some years back this was a widespread problem. Perhaps you have a SIGPIPE trap handler set in your shell? If this is the issue you see then the solution is to locate where SIGPIPE is being ignored and remove it so that it can terminate the writing process appropriately. I can say more and explain the issue in more detail if this is the problem. What is the output of 'trap' at the command line? $ trap trap -- '' SIGTSTP trap -- '' SIGTTIN trap -- '' SIGTTOU The easy way to recreate the case is with the following. First the normal case. $ trap trap -- '' SIGTSTP trap -- '' SIGTTIN trap -- '' SIGTTOU $ yes | head -n1 y Then set up the failure case by ignoring SIGPIPE. $ trap '' PIPE $ yes | head -n1 y yes: standard output: Broken pipe yes: write error Ignoring SIGPIPE creates the problem. Bob
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