Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!killer!wnp
From: wnp@killer.UUCP (Wolf Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Public Domain version of: yes(1)
Message-ID: <3814@killer.UUCP>
Date: 13 Apr 88 20:17:01 GMT
References: <2797@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: wnp@killer.UUCP (Wolf Paul)
Organization: The Unix(R) Connection BBS, Dallas, Tx
Lines: 20

In article <2797@crash.cts.com> cline@pnet01.cts.com (Ben Humphreys) writes:
>>	yes | rm filenames...
>
>If yes's output has to complete before rm's processing is to begin, how does
>yes know when to stop (forgive such a niave question please)?
     ^^^^
     It doesn't. As soon as rm is done, it closes its end of the pipe; next
time yes tries to write to the pipe (as I said, it doesn't know that rm is
done), the write fails because the pipe has been closed at the reading end,
and yes dies with the error message, "broken pipe" (at least on 4.2 that's
the way it behaves).

Also of course, yes' output does not have to complete before rm begins -
this is happening concurrently. Remember, UNIX is multi-tasking :-).
Yes only needs to output one line before rm can delete the first file, and
so on, one line of "yes" output per deleted file.
-- 
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