A script to run emacsclient in two basic cases: (1) with stdin, to open a new buffer with the contents passed in (2) without stdin, to open a file passed as the argument.

epipe.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
# Based on a similar util by Phil Jackson (phil@shellarchive.co.uk)
use Cwd;
use File::Copy;

if (-t STDIN ) {
  # No STDIN was passed
  #
  @args = ();
} else {
  # Some STDIN was passed
  #
  chomp ($tmp_file = `mktemp /tmp/emacsclient.XXXXX`);
  $data = do { local $/; <DATA> };
  $lisp_to_accept_file = <<END;
(progn (unless (functionp 'fake-stdin-slurp)
          $data)
       (fake-stdin-slurp \"${\(getcwd)}\" \"$tmp_file\")
       (select-frame-set-input-focus (window-frame (selected-window))))
END
  copy(\*STDIN,$tmp_file);

  @args = ("-a","-emacs", "-e", $lisp_to_accept_file);
}
push @args, @ARGV;
system "emacsclient", @args;

if ($? == -1) {
  if ($tmp_file) {
    print "some data was saved in $tmp_file";
  }
} else {
  unlink($tmp_file) if $tmp_file;
  # print "just removed $tmp_file";
}


__DATA__
(defun fake-stdin-slurp (current-dir filename)
 "Emulate stdin slurp using emacsclient hack"
 (switch-to-buffer (generate-new-buffer "*stdin*"))
 (cd current-dir)
 (insert-file filename)
 (end-of-buffer))