Checking if the other end of a fifo is open

[Nicholas Leippe]

An opposite timeout approach could be:

1) set a flag
2) create a trap handler that clears the flag
3) do your write in backgrounded subshell, that signals the parent when 
finished
4) after spawning the subshell, sleep (your timeout)
5) then check the flag

This may provide more graceful cleanup, but could be more awkward for your 
write depending on how you need to do it.