[GLLUG] read -t 1 hangs on reading from an unconnected pipe.

[Tim Woodall]

Happy new year to all.


I didn't expect this:

tim at einstein(9):~$ mkfifo /tmp/pipe
tim at einstein(9):~$ time read -t 1 </tmp/pipe

real    0m13.514s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.000s
tim at einstein(9):~$


in another terminal I did:
tim at einstein(10):~$ echo >/tmp/pipe


I had expected the read to time out after one second.

Is there any way to make read always timeout, even if the other end of
the pipe isn't connected?

Tim.