#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Time::HiRes;

$SIG{"ALRM"}=\&sigAlarm;

my $interval=1;
my $uInterval=$interval*10**6;
Time::HiRes::ualarm($uInterval, $uInterval);
open TAIL, "tail -f xyz|" or die 'couldnt open xyz';
while (1)
{
  while ($line=<TAIL>)
  {
      $X = $!;
      print $line;
  }
  if (eof(TAIL)) {
    print "EOF TAIL!\n";
  }
  print "Fell through... $!\n";
}

sub sigAlarm
{
    print "alarm\n";
}
[download]

I think the problem is once you've done the first $line=<TAIL> it's too late. Here's what I wrote that DOES work correctly and will not exit the loop, but as I said I'm not proud of it ;):

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Time::HiRes;

$SIG{"ALRM"}=\&sigAlarm;

my $interval=1;
my $uInterval=$interval*10**6;
Time::HiRes::ualarm($uInterval, $uInterval);

my $logname='xyz';
open TAIL, "tail -f $logname|" or die "couldn't open $logname";
while (1)
{
  while(1)
  {
    if (eof(TAIL))
    {
      printf "EOF: %d\n", eof(TAIL);
      $line=<TAIL>;
      next;
    }

    last    if !($line=<TAIL>);
    print $line;
  }
  print "Fell through...\n";
}

sub sigAlarm
{
  print "alarm\n";
}
[download]

I also wonder if doing that eof() test at the beginning go throw me into an infinite loop under some conditions, but as so far this seems to be ok for now.

-mark

I think I finally have a clean solution. After much reading and asking around in the office someone helped me with this snippet, assuming TAIL is the file handle you're doing the tail -f on. The answer is to simply redo the failed operation which previous responses had suggested. So if anyone is interested this is what I've settled on and particularly like it because it's short and straightforward:

while (1)
{
  while(1)
  {
    my $line = <TAIL>;
    if (!defined($line))
    {
      redo    if $! eq 'Interrupted system call';
      last;
    }

    print $line;
  }
  printf "Fell through...\n";
}
[download]

-mark