IOException: Read end dead

ioexception, java, pipe

Solution

I encountered `java.io.IOException: Read end dead` in my code and found out the cause. Posting an example code below. You will get an "Read end dead" exception if you run the code. If you take a close look, the consumer thread reads "hello" from the stream and terminates; meanwhile the producer sleeps for 2 seconds and tries to write " world" but fails. A related problem explained here: http://techtavern.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/whats-this-ioexception-write-end-dead/

class ReadEnd {
public static void main(String[] args) {
    final PipedInputStream in = new PipedInputStream();
    new Thread(new Runnable() { //consumer
        @Override
        public void run() {
            try {
                byte[] tmp = new byte[1024];
                while (in.available() > 0) {         // only once...
                    int i = in.read(tmp, 0, 1024);
                    if (i < 0)
                        break;
                    System.out.print(new String(tmp, 0, i));
                }
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            } finally {

            }
        }
    }).start();
    PipedOutputStream out = null;
    try {

        out = new PipedOutputStream(in);
        out.write("hello".getBytes());
        Thread.sleep(2 * 1000);
        out.write(" world".getBytes()); //Exception thrown here

    } catch (IOException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
    }
}

}

Problem

Original source