Pipe from a while loop to a command but execute another command if pipe command fails

Question

Environment: armv7l GNU/Linux Debian Jessie, GNU bash, v4.3.30(1)-release (arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf).

• do_stuff: a long running process which generates output to STDOUT
• compare_output.pl: a perl script which does things based on the output.

I want to be able to restart the compare_output.pl in case the process compare_output.pl breaks (dies). Even a simple echo after the while loop, (and after the compare_output.pl), was unsuccessful.

Sadly I lack the idea how to actually do this in bash. Bonus for retaining the Cache/Puffer of the do_stuff process.

while true;
do
  ...
  do_stuff (which generates lot of output linewise to STDOUT)
  ...
done | compare_output.pl 
#then something like this should happen, while retaining 
#the while loop and being able to "reattach" to the pipe.
"compare_output died? restart it "

Sometimes compare_output.pl breaks, (dies actually), which loses the whole pipe input. (Needless to say compare_output.pl should not break, but that is another problem for another day).

When compare_output breaks I want to be able to reuse the while loop, to be able to reattach to the pipe output. Losing one or a few lines is acceptable.

I tried using command substitution instead of a pipe:

while true;
do
  ...
  do_stuff (which generates lot of output linewise)
  ...
done < <( compare_output.pl )
# then something like this should happen, while retaining
# the while loop and being able to "reattach" to the pipe.
compare_output died? restart it "

restart_while_loop in case compare_output.pl fails (dies)

read and adapted from Bash: cannot break out of piped "while read" loop; process substitution works

This other than obstructing output seems to not resolve my issue that I want to act after compare_output.pl dies.

When I did CTRL-C then my echo test gets executed, which i did instead of the compare_output.pl restart test.

Otherwise do_stuff still runs for a long time.

Other than that I did read about piping and process substitution, lots of questions here but I seem to lack the right keyword to search for.

I know of Why is using a shell loop to process text considered bad practice? and understand that the way I do it is bad practice, but it's the situation I'm in which I currently cannot change.

So how can I get something to happen as soon as possible after compare_output.pl dies? (process stops running, no ps entry)

I am open for a full rewrite of the loop if that should be the only option to get this actually working. Currently I do not want to use other scripting languages, but if necessary I (somehow) could rewrite this in perl but would like not to.

Answer 1

Pipe the first loop into another loop:

while :; do ./do_stuff ; done | 
  while :; do ./compare_output.pl ; done