tail -f and tail --follow=name in pipe

[Ernst Kloppenburg]

Hello,

I am using 'tail' from textutils 2.0-6 on a Debian GNU/Linux system.

When tail is used in a pipe, it behaves strangely when the option
--follow=name is given. The behaviour I found strange is illustrated by the
following example:

1) tail -f /var/log/syslog | wc 
   when wc is terminated by kill <pid>, the tail program exits the next time
   a line is written to the file followed. This makes sense, because at this
   time it is detekted that the pipe is broken.

2) tail --follow=name /var/log/syslog | wc
   in this case, when wc is killed, the tail command never terminates
   
Is this a bug, as I suspect?


Best regards, 

E. Kloppenburg


-- 
Ernst Kloppenburg
Stuttgart, Germany