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Python

BrokenPipeError: What It Means and How to Fix It

Error reference

BrokenPipeError

Language

Python

Severity

Low

When it happens

BrokenPipeError is raised when a process tries to write to a pipe whose reading end has been closed.

Potential fixes

Catch BrokenPipeError around your write operations and exit cleanly. For scripts that write to stdout, closing sys.stderr before exit suppresses the noisy traceback. This is expected behavior in Unix pipelines and is usually not a bug in your code.

Related errors

OSErrorConnectionError

Deep dive

BrokenPipeError is raised when a process tries to write to a pipe whose reading end has been closed. It commonly occurs in Unix pipelines when a downstream command (like head or grep) finishes and closes its stdin before the upstream process is done writing.

Why it happens

  • •Piping output to a command that exits early (e.g. head -1 or less).
  • •A network socket is written to after the remote end has closed the connection.
  • •A subprocess reading from a pipe exits before consuming all output.

Potential fixes

Catch BrokenPipeError around your write operations and exit cleanly. For scripts that write to stdout, closing sys.stderr before exit suppresses the noisy traceback. This is expected behavior in Unix pipelines and is usually not a bug in your code.

Examples

Python

Code that triggers the error

# python script.py | head -1
import sys
for i in range(1000):
    print(i)  # BrokenPipeError after head closes the pipe

Error output

BrokenPipeError: [Errno 32] Broken pipe

Fixed code

import sys

try:
    for i in range(1000):
        print(i)
except BrokenPipeError:
    # Reader closed early, that is fine
    sys.stderr.close()

Practice in English

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