Using named pipes with bash - Problem with data loss

Question

Did some search online, found simple \'tutorials\' to use named pipes. However when I do anything with background jobs I seem to lose a lot of data.

[[Edit: found a

Answer 1

As said in other answers you need to keep the fifo open at all times to avoid losing data.

However, once all writers have left after the fifo has been open (so there was a writer), reads return immediately (and poll() returns POLLHUP). The only way to clear this state is to reopen the fifo.

POSIX does not provide a solution to this but at least Linux and FreeBSD do: if reads start failing, open the fifo again while keeping the original descriptor open. This works because in Linux and FreeBSD the "hangup" state is local to a particular open file description, while in POSIX it is global to the fifo.

This can be done in a shell script like this:

while :; do
    exec 3