popen bug?

Mark Preston mkprest@hotmail.com
Mon, 05 May 2003 11:10:51 +0100


Is there a bug in the GHC implementation of the popen function that 
manifests itself when more than 4k is written to the pipe?

I'm trying to reproduce in Haskell the standard UNIX shell pipe idiom:

    cat 4097 | cat

where 4097 is a file containing 4097 bytes. My Haskell code looks as 
follows:

-- snip --

import Posix
import IO
import System

main :: IO ()
main = do sequence_ $ map printChunk chunks

printChunk :: String -> IO ()
printChunk str
    = do (find_output, _, _) <- popen "cat" [] (Just str)
         (cat_output, _, _) <- popen "cat" [] (Just find_output)
         putStrLn cat_output
         putStrLn $ show (length str)

lengths = [4095,4096..]
str = repeat 'a'
chunks = zipWith take lengths (repeat str)

-- end snip --

I get two pieces of output, one for each of the 4095 and 4096 bytes, but 
nothing for 4097 bytes, the program just hangs.

Is this some bizarre feature of lazy evaluation, or a mistake in the way 
that popen is implemented (or both)?

I'm using ghc-5.04.3 on linux 2.4.20-8 (Red Hat 9).

Thanks, Mark.

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