On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 04:05:19PM -0600, Matt Gushee wrote:
> 
>   echo '%show' > /tmp/bantam-matt/message.pipe
> 
> ) --this caused the I/O error. Yet, if invoked the same 'echo' command 
> directly in an interactive shell (in this case, bash running in an 
> rxvt), it never caused the error. Why on earth would that be, I wonder?

At a guess because stdin is a tty, then output might be line buffered
(regardless of destination?)