socat doesn't work inside deflisten variable

[taylor85345]

I am trying to update my workspaces module in eww to listen to a socket in Hyprland for workspace updates, but for some reason socat refuses to run inside a script launched from a deflisten variable, and I can't figure out why.

#!/bin/bash
ic=(0     輸    )

workspaces() {

#define icons for workspaces 1-9

unset -v \
  o1 o2 o3 o4 o5 o6 o7 o8 o9 \
  f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7 f8 f9

# check if Occupied
for num in $(hyprctl workspaces | grep ID | sed 's/()/(1)/g' | sort | awk 'NR>1{print $1}' RS='(' FS=')'); do 
  export o"$num"="$num"
done
                                       
 
#check if Focused
for num in $(hyprctl monitors | grep active | sed 's/()/(1)/g' | sort | awk 'NR>1{print $1}' RS='(' FS=')'); do 
  export f"$num"="$num"
done

echo 	"(eventbox :onscroll \"echo {} | sed -e 's/up/-1/g' -e 's/down/+1/g' | xargs hyprctl dispatch workspace\" (box	:class \"works\"	:orientation \"h\" :spacing 5 :space-evenly \"true\" 	(button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 1\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 1 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\" :class	\"0$o1$f1\"	\"${ic[1]}\") (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 2\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 2 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o2$f2\"	 \"${ic[2]}\") (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 3\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 3 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o3$f3\" \"${ic[3]}\") (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 4\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 4 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o4$f4\"	\"${ic[4]}\") (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 5\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 5 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o5$f5\" \"${ic[5]}\")  (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 6\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 6 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o6$f6\" \"${ic[6]}\")  (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 7\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 7 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o7$f7\" \"${ic[7]}\")  (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 8\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 8 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o8$f8\" \"${ic[8]}\")  (button :onclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 9\" :onrightclick \"hyprctl dispatch workspace 9 && /home/taylor/.config/hypr/default_app\"	:class \"0$o9$f9\" \"${ic[9]}\")))"

}
workspaces
#tail -f /tmp/hypr/"$HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE"/hyprland.log | grep --line-buffered "Changed to workspace" | while read -r; do 
socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/hypr/"$HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE"/.socket2.sock | grep --line-buffered "workspace" | while read -r; do 
workspaces
done

The above script has two alternative lines at the bottom for tracking workspace events, one by using tail on the hyprland.log file, and another using socat on socket2.sock. Both lines work identically when the script is run in a terminal, but when called inside a deflisten the tail line works as expected, but the socat line does not and no socat process is active.

I'm sure I'm somehow being dense, which is why I didn't just open an issue, but any thoughts are welcome.

[taylor85345]

for reference, I've also experimented with calling socat directly inside of deflisten, and I get the same results. No socat process:

(deflisten workspace "socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/tmp/hypr/6213328d2cba771aa8db4379d6ec88bf15f103d9_1656442426/.socket2.sock | while read -r; do scripts/workspace; done")

Note, I replaced $HYPRLAND_INSTANCE_SIGNATURE with the actual value as a sanity check.

[taylor85345]

Socat is definitely executing, and doesn't seem to report any errors. Running it with the -lf flag successfully generates an empty log file. socat just seems to exit immediately.

[taylor85345]

Alright, I figured it out. Turns out in this case socat needs to be called with the -u (unidirectional) flag because stdout doesn't generate any traffic back to the hyprland socket and socat times out waiting. I'm not sure why this only occurs when running the script inside eww, but here we are.