bug#34488: Add sort --limit, or document workarounds for sort|head error messages

[Assaf Gordon]

Helo,

On 2019-02-15 8:20 a.m., Eric Blake wrote:
> On 2/15/19 8:43 AM, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> > sort: write failed: 'standard output': Broken pipe
> > sort: write error
[...]
> Perhaps coreutils should teach 'env' a command-line option to forcefully
> reset SIGPIPE back to default behavior [...]   If we
> did that, then even if your sh is started with SIGPIPE ignored (so that
> the shell itself can't restore default behavior), you could do this
> theoretical invocation:
>
> $ seq 9999 | env --default-signal PIPE sort -n | sed 5q | wc -l
> 5

That is a nice idea, I could've used it myself couple of times.

Attached a suggested patch.
If this seems like a good direction, I'll complete it with NEWS/docs/etc.

Usage is:
    env --default-signal=PIPE
    env -P     ##shortcut to reset SIGPIPE
    env --default-signal=PIPE,INT,FOO


This also works nicely with the recent 'env -S' option,
so a script like so can always start with default SIGPIPE handler:

    #!/usr/bin/env -S -P sh
    seq inf | head -n1



comments welcomed,
 - assaf

0001-env-new-option-D-default-signal-SIG-FIXME.patch
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