CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
sjsam
sjsam

Reputation: 21965

Timeout invocation on piped commands

Could somebody explain how the timeout works for piped commands? For example,

timeout 2s a | b

Here is the timeout applied only for the a command?
And if timeout indeed occurs, would that result in a broken pipe?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 146

Answers (1)

Jonathan Leffler
Jonathan Leffler

Reputation: 753695

Yes, timeout is a regular command, not a built-in, so it is executed with arguments timeout, 2s and a. If the timeout occurs, the read end of the pipe in b will indicate EOF once all the data in it has been read (because there's no process left to write to the pipe). But b will not get a SIGPIPE signal from a exiting (whether because of a timeout or because it finished before the timeout); a broken pipe is a problem on the write side, not the read side.

Upvotes: 1

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