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why complain about a broken pipe?



$ pax -zf ../distfiles/prolac-0.0.5.tar.gz | head -1
prolac-0.0.5
pax: Listing incomplete. (Broken pipe)
gzip: error writing to output: Broken pipe

To me, that's two messages too many.  I would like to offer a patch
(although hushing gzip might be beyond me).  

Why should any write to standard output should ever result in a an
error message?  The user can perfectly well see what happened and
always has the option of testing the return status.  

It is normal for readers of pipes to close them before EOF, and the
reader has no way to tell the writer why.  If an error condition
exists, it's the reader's job to say so.  

Now pressing ^S ....

--jkl


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