Re: ls: write error: Broken pipe

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

  > Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> wrote:
  > > Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
  > >
  > >   > Dan Nicolaescu <address@hidden> wrote:
  > >   > > I have been using this alias: lt = 'ls -lt | head'
  > >   > ...
  > >   > > ls: write error: Broken pipe
  > >   > >
  > >   > > Is there any reason for this error to be printed?
  > >   >
  > >   > Hi Dan,
  > >   >
  > >   > You should see it only if you have changed the default signal
  > >   > handling to ignore SIGPIPE, and then only some of the time.
  > >   > When it's possible to see it, kernel buffering and the size of your
  > >   > environment also determine how much can be written before the
  > >   > signal is sent.
  > >
  > > Hmm, that probably explains the behavior I am seeing: in the beginning
  > > no error, but after executing a few commands (i.e. the history size
  > > grows)
  > >
  > > This is with tcsh, and AFAIK tcsh does not have a way to tell it
  > 
  > I'm sure you've already heard it, but I have to say it:
  > You shouldn't use csh-based shells.
  > If you ask anyone or google, you'll find many good reasons.

This is probably not the right place to talk about this, but since you
started...
bash didn't have decent programmable completion until 3.0 (maybe
3.1?). It still does not have dabbrev-expand, which for someone used
to emacs is irreplaceable. (Yes, I did submit a patch, it will be
available in the next version of bash). There's a few other missing
things: the prompt ellipsis, run-fg-editor, 

zsh is a non-starter, it is not available on many systems that I have
to use.

I am pretty happy with tcsh, the only problem is that some systems
don't install it by default anymore.

  > Lack of a decent signal-handling mechanism is one of them.

This has never been a problem for my use.

  > > whether to catch SIGPIPE or not. Maybe something has changed in tcsh
  > > to make it catch SIGPIPE...
  > 
  > How do you start tcsh?

It's the login shell. I used it in xterm, not sure how xterm starts
it.