Funny, I fixed a bug caused by exactly this recently in a program in production that had been humming along nicely until the output of another utility had grown

Funny, I fixed a bug caused by exactly this recently in a program in production that had been humming along nicely until the output of another utility had grown larger than it ever was in testing or previously in production, causing the deadlock. The big warning in the Python docs sure was helpful in finding the problem.