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authorJim Meyering <meyering@redhat.com>2009-09-07 22:10:10 +0200
committerJim Meyering <meyering@redhat.com>2009-09-07 23:19:56 +0200
commitaf6436559c2954d7f35b7fec29dfcbaa4ebdc03b (patch)
tree4c5d53442d729d663c15809899bd5c03bdf13b6d /NEWS
parentfd9750b0ffb691d2ad97551eada5c2802df3c805 (diff)
downloadcoreutils-af6436559c2954d7f35b7fec29dfcbaa4ebdc03b.tar.xz
tail: ignore -f for piped-stdin, as POSIX requires
* src/tail.c (main): Tailing a pipe "forever" is not useful, and POSIX specifies that tail ignore the -f when there is no file argument and stdin is a FIFO or pipe. So we do that. In addition, GNU tail excludes "-" arguments from the list of files to tail forever, when the associated file descriptor is connected to a FIFO or pipe. Before this change, ":|tail -f" would hang. Reported by Ren Yang and Ulrich Drepper. * tests/tail-2/pipe-f: Test for this. * tests/tail-2/pipe-f2: Ensure tail doesn't exit early for a fifo. * tests/Makefile.am (TESTS): Add these tests. * NEWS (POSIX conformance): Mention it.
Diffstat (limited to 'NEWS')
-rw-r--r--NEWS6
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index a5a60948e..7d4f7e203 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -46,6 +46,12 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
+** POSIX conformance
+
+ tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO, per POSIX.
+ Now, :|tail -f terminates immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
+ [the old behavior dates back to the original implementation]
+
* Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]