Sorry if the text above seems a little rushed. I was on my way out from work. :-)

I double checked the main program, and it is actually suffering from the same issue as the reduced test.

If I put a delay in the writer, everything works fine. I was looking, however, for something I could do in the reader, as that will be the only half I have any control over in the end.

As far as I can tell, the problem seems to be that the reader is not seeing the closing of the pipe if another writer opens the pipe again soon enough. This seems to me to go against the point of the named pipe, though I suppose I could accept the rationalization that the reader is still "present" when the new writer opens the pipe (as the reader hasn't had time to close its end of the pipe yet), so it doesn't block, and there is still data comming in (from the new writer), so the reader doesn't see an eof... I guess. :-)

I suppose I should also include the apropriate information about my perl and OS:

Summary of my perl5 (revision 5.0 version 6 subversion 1) configuratio
+n:
  Platform:
    osname=linux, osvers=2.4.13, archname=i386-linux
    uname='linux duende 2.4.13 #1 wed oct 31 19:18:07 est 2001 i686 un
+known '
[download]

... and so on. I really appreciate any info anyone can shed on this. TIA.

bbfu
Seasons don't fear The Reaper.
Nor do the wind, the sun, and the rain.
We can be like they are.