ls: write error: Broken pipe

[Dan Nicolaescu]

I have been using this alias: lt = 'ls -lt | head' 
for a long long time, on many systems. 

On Fedora 7 I get this from time to time:


cd /usr/lib 

lt
total 162508
drwxr-xr-x 10 rpm  rpm      4096 2007-10-31 00:11 rpm/
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root     4096 2007-10-31 00:11 firefox-2.0.0.5/
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root     4096 2007-10-31 00:10 gthumb/
drwxr-xr-x  3 root root     4096 2007-10-31 00:10 scim-1.0/
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     4096 2007-10-22 08:22 xemacs-21.5-b28/
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     4096 2007-10-22 08:22 xemacs/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       19 2007-10-22 08:22 libneXtaw.so.0 -> 
libneXtaw.so.0.15.1*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       20 2007-10-22 08:22 libcompface.so.1 -> 
libcompface.so.1.0.0*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       19 2007-10-22 08:22 libcanna16.so.1 -> 
libcanna16.so.1.2.0*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       17 2007-10-22 08:22 libcanna.so.1 -> 
libcanna.so.1.2.0*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       17 2007-10-22 08:22 libRKC16.so.1 -> 
libRKC16.so.1.2.0*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       15 2007-10-22 08:22 libRKC.so.1 -> 
libRKC.so.1.2.0*
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 2007-10-19 10:16 tk8.4/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       17 2007-10-19 10:16 tcl8.4 -> /usr/share/tcl8.4/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       27 2007-10-19 10:15 libsvn_swig_perl-1.so.0 -> 
libsvn_swig_perl-1.so.0.0.0*
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 2007-10-16 19:59 vte/
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       25 2007-10-11 06:54 libsvn_swig_py-1.so.0 -> 
libsvn_swig_py-1.so.0.0.0*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       20 2007-10-11 06:54 libsvn_wc-1.so.0 -> 
libsvn_wc-1.so.0.0.0*
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       26 2007-10-11 06:54 libsvn_ra_local-1.so.0 -> 
libsvn_ra_local-1.so.0.0.0*
ls: write error: Broken pipe

Is there any reason for this error to be printed? 

The strange thing is that I don't always get this error, I could run
"lt" and not see the error, then run it again and see it.

I am using: coreutils-6.9-3.fc7

Thanks

        --dan