Re: [bug-gawk] Behavior of fflush with SIGPIPE on stdout

[david kerns]

as another data point, I think this related behaviour is also incorrect:

$ mknod /tmp/pipe p

$ yes | awk '{print > "/tmp/pipe";fflush("/tmp/pipe")}' &

$ head -3 /tmp/pipe

y

y

y

$ head -3 /tmp/pipe

y

y

y

the second head should have blocked for a writer, since the close of the first head should have terminated the awk

(which is what you get w/out the flush)

$ yes | awk '{print > "/tmp/pipe"}' &                  
[1]     27640
$ head -3 /tmp/pipe                   
y
y
y
$ awk: cmd. line:1: (FILENAME=- FNR=4097) fatal: print to "/tmp/pipe" failed (Broken pipe)
yes: standard output: Connection reset by peer
yes: write error

[1] +  Done(2)                    yes | awk '{print > "/tmp/pipe"}' &

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 3:42 AM, <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,

After a recent OS upgrade on the only machine where I do heavy awk work, I got caught by a regression dated 2013 in gawk, namely the one about "ignored SIGPIPE".

Basically, what happens is that the ages-old unix idiom

        infinite-data-source | filter | head

fails if "filter" is a post-2013 gawk using explicit fflush().

Example:

        yes | awk '{print;fflush(stdout)}' | head

Of course this is a cooked example, but I guess you can imagine the real-life situations where explicit fflush() is needed, with appropriate task-dependent granularity, for performance and interactivity.


Looking at the comments in main.c, I do not see whether this regression was considered or not.
It rather looks like the idea of "writing to a pipe" was generally thought about in the context of additional fds ("print ... | cmd"), but that the simple, obvious case of

        - gawk used as a unix filter
        - stdout is a pipe

was overlooked.

I assume this is just a shallow search on my part; thanks in advance for giving pointers to the relevant discussion and release notes announcing this regression, and the idiomatic ways to avoid it.

-Alex

PS: Note that crude versions of awk like "mawk" don't have the issue, but I need gawk for the obvious reasons.


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