Cygwin1.dll 1.5.19: race condition & deadlock with fifos

[Barry Kelly]

I'm having a problem trying to script with fifos under the bash shell.
There appears to be a race condition which results in a deadlock when
fifos are being read and written in quick succession (but just a single
read and write, so there are no interleaving issues).

This code with an explicit delay before the write, running under bash
3.1.17(6)-release (on Cygwin1.dll 1.5.19), works as expected:

---8<---
~/test-fifo$ mkfifo fifo
~/test-fifo$ ((sleep 1; echo foo >fifo)&); echo Read: $(<fifo)
Read: foo
--->8---

This code, with a delay before the read, also works:

---8<---
~/test-fifo$ rm fifo
~/test-fifo$ mkfifo fifo
~/test-fifo$ ((echo foo >fifo)&); sleep 1; echo Read: $(<fifo)
Read: foo
--->8---

This code, without a delay, causes a deadlock and both active spawned
bash processes (the forked one reading from the fifo and the
backgrounded one) need to be killed explicitly:

---8<---
~/test-fifo$ rm fifo
~/test-fifo$ mkfifo fifo
~/test-fifo$ ((echo foo >fifo)&); echo Read: $(<fifo)
--->8---

I am not subscribed: please CC me if you reply.

-- Barry

-- 
http://barrkel.blogspot.com/
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