Re: EPIPE in standard utils ([issue41])

[Paul Jarc]

Tom Lord <address@hidden> wrote:
>   Exit status of non-leading programs in pipelines is a weak spot of
>   shell programming.

Non-trailing, you mean?

>   Using the notation "|+" for this, one might write:
>
>       set -e
>
>       sort "$somefile" |+ head -1 > ,first-one
>
>   expecting the script to fail if "$somefile" can not be opened or
>   the `sort' fails for some other reason.
>
>   But what if `sort' will die of a SIGPIPE?

FWIW, it's easy enough to prevent that in the script, by making sure
the later programs in the pipeline read stdin all the way to EOF.
sort "$somefile" |+ sed -n 1p > ,first-one

>   Consider that `sort' may get SIGPIPE or EPIPE for two very distinct
>   reasons.   (1) it might get that error because the consumer for its
>   stdout has stopped reading.  This is an ordinary and expected
>   condition and means only that `sort' is free to exit at will.

That would not be true in a situation where the reading end of the
pipe is closed as a result of an error, and the error is otherwise not
reported - or at least, not sufficently reported.  How sure are we
that that can never happen?


paul