Re: why complain about a broken pipe?

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

> $ pax -w * | hexdump -C | head -1
> 00000000  1b 5b 3f 31 3b 32 63 1b  5b 3f 31 3b 32 63 1b 5b  |.[?1;2c.[?
> 1;2c.[| 
> pax: Failed write to archive volume: 1 (Broken pipe)
> 
> ATTENTION! pax archive volume change required.
> Ready for archive volume: 2
> Input archive name or "." to quit pax.
> Archive name > ^C
> pax: Signal caught, cleaning up.

> Typing "." yields a list of files not processed, something that would
> be a lot harder to do without ignoring SIGPIPE.  ;-)

It's also pretty much useless, because there may be a semi-arbitrary
number of files completely processed by pax but lost when the pipes'
buffers were thrown away with the pipes.

Even knowing that the archive wasn't completely read isn't really of
much use; as you pointed out, failure to read input is not an error.
Why should it suddenly become one when the input in question is an
archive?  Even if the archive is piped into ssh?

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