Linux: Checking if a socket/pipe is broken without doing a read()/write()

Question

I have a simple piece of code that periodically writes data to a fd that\'s passed to it. The fd will most likely be a pipe or socket but could potentially be anything. I can de

Answer 1

struct pollfd pfd = {.fd = yourfd, .events = POLLERR};
if (poll(&pfd, 1, whatever) < 0) abort();
if (pfd.revents & POLLERR) printf("pipe is broken\n");

This does work for me. Note that sockets are not exactly pipes and thus show different behavior (-> use POLLRDHUP).