GNU bug report logs - #32751
split does not break on error from tar

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Message #16 received at control <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Alexander Fieroch <alexander.fieroch <at> mpi-dortmund.mpg.de>,
 "Rainer M. Canavan" <coreutils <at> canavan.de>
Cc: 32751 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#32751: split does not break on error from tar
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2018 01:06:24 -0700

tag 32751 notabug
close 32751
stop

On 18/09/18 00:59, Alexander Fieroch wrote:
>> As far as I can tell, this is not a bug, but the way pipelines work,
>> i.e. the  result of a pipeline (here the combination of tar and
>> split) is the result of the last command in the pipeline. If you
>> want the combination to fail if tar fails, you can use e.g.
>> set -o pipefail in bash or read PIPESTATUS. For other shells,
>> see e.g. http://cfajohnson.com/shell/cus-faq-2.html#Q11
>>
>>
>> Rainer
> 
> Thanks Rainer, that is a very good hint and is working for me!
> But why is this not a bug? In what case is it useful to ignore a 
> non-zero exit code in a pipeline?

Well that's been the shell behavior since the beginning,
and lot's of scripts depend on that,
and so it can't be changed.

As for split, it just sees the end of input
and exits without error.

thanks,
Pádraig

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