USER question

[Bill Campbell]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2008, Fairlight wrote:
>Is it possible to generate EOF on the outgoing stream to a program without
>closing the entire USER session?  Likewise, how do you detect EOF on the
>incoming stream from USER if the external isn't purposely built for use
>with fP?

Ken has already addressed the EOF question.

The only thing I've done that may be similar is dealing with
input from devices which don't get closed properly.  In those
cases I have set an alarm, and all it closed after some period of
inactivity.

I do this when printing checks from RealWorld COBOL software that
(a) is hard coded to a /dev/lp? device, and (b) opens and closes
the COBOL file for every line printed.  I replace the device with
a named pipe, and have a perl process that continually reads that
device, terminating a logical print job after some specified time
out interval.

Bill
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