[MPlayer-users] mplayer sometimes dies when using a fifo as output

[josh at techlab.cviatlanta.org]

Hello all,
I'm not sure if the following is normal behavior or a bug.  
We are using mplayer to listen to a windows media stream, then convert it to wave file using -ao pcm.  The result is 
sent to a fifo where another application picks it up, converts the pcm data to mp3 and re-broadcasts it.  If the 
application on the output end of the fifo exits, mplayer will crash.  This is reproduceable as follows:
#1.  mkfifo out.wav
#2.  mplayer -quiet <url to your favorite internet audio> -ao pcm:file=out.wav
#3.  On another console, logged in as the same user that mplayer is running, listen to the wav file using your favorite 
wav player. e.g. aplay out.wav
#6. exit the wav player, go back to the terminal with mplayer, and see mplayer crash.  
Again, I'm not sure if this is normal or not.  I would provide debugging info if I could, but I can't seem to get 
mplayer to compile with --enable-debug=3, either the latest stable version or svn, using both gcc-3.4.6 and 4.1.2.
Cheers, and thank you all for an excellent player; I appreciate everyone's time and effort.
Josh