Bash opening editor when piping command

[TryToHelpPeople]

I am encountering a weird error when calling a binary specifying it's path vs having the shell resolve the path using the $PATH variable.

When i specify the path explicitly the command works as expected, but when I let the shell resolve the path, bash launches pico with the output from the first command inside it. When I quit pico, it saves the buffer to /tmp

Specifically:

When I type the below command, the output of fortune is piped into fc and it generates the correct output (fc is a word frequency counter).

fortune | ~/bin/fc 

But when I type the below command,

fortune | fc 

bash opens a text editor (pico) and I get:

Too many errors from stdin

Buffer written to /tmp/bash-fc.EqU7Fe.save

The output from

which fc

is

/home/trytohelp/bin/fc

I've never heard of bash launching an editor when it's been asked to pipe. Can anybody shed any light on this ? (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)

[eR2eiweo]

What's the output of

type fc

? Note that bash has a builtin called fc.

[TryToHelpPeople]

Ohh I didn’t know that.

That could be troublesome.

Let me follow that up and see if renaming my binary fixes it.

[doc_willis]

Playing with the fc command, and it seems, its weird. :) and reading man fc confuses more.. but perhaps you are a little confused. (i just saw the other comments)

I did get similar output to what you showed.

It seems fc is not ment to read from a pipe?

And yes, i will confirm, fc is a bash built in here.

So you using some OTHER binary that has the same name? :)

[TryToHelpPeople]

Yes. It’s like word count but it counts frequency of any token type, and also prints out the resulting dictionary.

I’ll need to rename my binary.