Subject: bug#23267: suggestion: silently ignore EPIPE errors when SIGPIPE is set to 'ignore'

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2016 00:47:13 -0700

Assaf Gordon wrote:
> With the above change, if SIGPIPE is set to 'ignore' (e.g. by the shell or python),
> then grep would exit with "write error: Broken Pipe".
> Based on recent suggestion from Pádraig Brady

I don't see why this is would be a good idea. grep should report write errors.

A caller that doesn't care about EPIPE output errors should invoke 'grep' with 
the default behavior for SIGPIPE and should ignore grep's exit status; this is 
longstanding tradition. As far as I can see, it's a mistake to ignore SIGPIPE 
while expecting a status of zero with no output-error diagnostics. Such a 
mistake would affect lots of programs other than 'grep', and it's not incumbent 
on utility writers to work around mistakes like this.