On Mon, 09 Jun 1997 22:49:22 CDT "Tim O'Brien" ([EMAIL PROTECTED]
) wrote:
> Ok, I finally have to break down and ask a potential dumb question: What
> the heck is a 'broken pipe'? I get these from time to time on my Debian box.
Err, first what is a pipe ?
A pipe a channel between two processes: everything that the first process will
write (to stdout) will be read (from stdin) (it can also happen for other file
descriptors, no always stdin and stdout).
Normally when the first process writing to the pipe has completed, it closes
the pipe, and the second process, reading the pipe ends gracefully.
But if the second process terminates while the first is still writing to the
pipe, the first process gets a broken pipe signal (SIGPIPE).
Eg:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~% yes | sh -c 'kill $$'
zsh: 14466 broken pipe yes |
zsh: 14467 terminated sh -c kill $$
The shell (zsh) reports that the first process died of sigpipe while the second
terminated unexpectedly (a SIGTERM actually).
You might want to read:
pipe(2)
signal(7)
A good book about unix.
Phil.
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