diff --git a/python/pyspark/rdd.py b/python/pyspark/rdd.py
index 95449eb43e581..10c9950051bb0 100644
--- a/python/pyspark/rdd.py
+++ b/python/pyspark/rdd.py
@@ -687,13 +687,25 @@ def groupBy(self, f, numPartitions=None):
         return self.map(lambda x: (f(x), x)).groupByKey(numPartitions)
 
     @ignore_unicode_prefix
-    def pipe(self, command, env={}):
+    def pipe(self, command, env={}, mode='permissive'):
         """
         Return an RDD created by piping elements to a forked external process.
 
         >>> sc.parallelize(['1', '2', '', '3']).pipe('cat').collect()
         [u'1', u'2', u'', u'3']
         """
+        if mode == 'permissive':
+            def fail_condition(x):
+                return False
+        elif mode == 'strict':
+            def fail_condition(x):
+                return x == 0
+        elif mode == 'grep':
+            def fail_condition(x):
+                return x == 0 or x == 1
+        else:
+            raise ValueError("mode must be one of 'permissive', 'strict' or 'grep'.")
+
         def func(iterator):
             pipe = Popen(
                 shlex.split(command), env=env, stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE)
@@ -707,7 +719,7 @@ def pipe_objs(out):
 
             def check_return_code():
                 pipe.wait()
-                if pipe.returncode:
+                if fail_condition(pipe.returncode):
                     raise Exception("Pipe function `%s' exited "
                                     "with error code %d" % (command, pipe.returncode))
                 else: