Consider the following program: import System.IO import System.IO.Error import System.Posix.Signals main = do installHandler sigPIPE Default Nothing c <- readFile "/usr/share/dict/words" putStrLn c `catchIOError` \e -> hPutStrLn stderr (show e) hPutStrLn stderr "I survived" Compile with ghc and run as ./test | true As expected, you see nothing further displayed, since according to `man 7 signal` the default for SIGPIPE is to terminate the program, which happens before the exception handler has a chance to run. Without the line where the signal handler gets installed the behavior is different: You'll see: <stdout>: commitBuffer: resource vanished (Broken pipe) I survived Apparently the GHC runtime does something like installHandler sigPIPE Ignore Nothing This is not a complaint, I find the behavior quite reasonable and much more predictable than the default (why should I not be able to catch EPIPE and continue?). The question is whether it is documented how the GHC runtime treats signals and if yes where? Cheers Ben -- I would rather have questions that cannot be answered, than answers that cannot be questioned. -- Richard Feynman