On how weechat handled a downloading file

Something really interesting happened on one my workstations which had this weechat IRC client running on it.

Weechat is this irssi-based IRC client for use on a Linux console. The features page lists certain interesting ones and while I first chose it over irssi, the compelling reason was proper proxy support (authenticated ones). I had little idea on how the “FIFO pipe for remote control” would be helpful- until this happened this morning:

I’m usually connected to the Freenode and Rizon networks. Rizon is primarily the japanese-animation/drama hub for various fansubbing groups. Mostly used for co-ordinating among fansubbers and providing XDCC leech bots. So, here I was, leeching an episode off of a particular bot, and not realising that the download had completed, I moved (mv) the file from the default download location (~/.weechat/dcc) to the approriate directory (~/Backups/Videos/Film). This I did, on another console within screen, I switched back (C-a C-a) to the console where weechat was running and was surprised to see that the file I thought had completely downloaded still going down around 98%. Shocked, I `ls -l ~/Backups/Videos/Film` and get even more shocked to see that the file-size of this moved file had grown a bit. What was happening here? When my disk is out of space and a download breaks due to that, I’d see a “broken pipe” message in the log window, so what happened here, I think, is what they mean by “FIFO pipe for remote control”. Even after I had moved an incomplete, currently downloading file to a new location, the download continued without any usually expected re-actions one would see with software on Windows or software such as LinuxDC++ (locked files).

That was an interesting experience and an interesting feature I’d love to see in more software. Good job, weechat. Copy-pasting off a weechat window is sort of stupid, though, owing to the nicklist on the right and fancier formatting. Overall, it’s been good.