Epipe

Epipe is a term used in Unix-like operating systems to describe a situation where a process attempts to write to a pipe, socket, or terminal that has been closed by the other end. When this occurs, the process receives a SIGPIPE signal, which typically causes the process to terminate. This behavior is intended to prevent processes from writing to a communication channel that is no longer available, which could lead to data corruption or other issues.

The term "epipe" itself is not a standard term in Unix literature, but it is commonly used in programming and system administration contexts to refer to the error condition described above. The error code associated with this condition is EPIPE, which stands for "Broken pipe." This error code is defined in the errno.h header file in C programming language.

To handle EPIPE errors gracefully, programmers can use signal handling mechanisms to catch the SIGPIPE signal and take appropriate action, such as closing the file descriptor or terminating the process cleanly. Additionally, some programming languages and libraries provide higher-level abstractions for handling I/O errors, which can simplify the process of managing EPIPE conditions.