diff --git a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/RDD.scala b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/RDD.scala
index 0804cdeb048a3..a4905dd51b940 100644
--- a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/RDD.scala
+++ b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/RDD.scala
@@ -714,7 +714,13 @@ abstract class RDD[T: ClassTag](
   }
 
   /**
-   * Return an RDD created by piping elements to a forked external process.
+   * Return an RDD created by piping elements to a forked external process. The resulting RDD
+   * is computed by executing the given process once per partition. All elements
+   * of each input partition are written to a process's stdin as lines of input separated
+   * by a newline. The resulting partition consists of the process's stdout output, with
+   * each line of stdout resulting in one element of the output partition. A process is invoked
+   * even for empty partitions.
+   *
    * The print behavior can be customized by providing two functions.
    *
    * @param command command to run in forked process.
diff --git a/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/PipedRDDSuite.scala b/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/PipedRDDSuite.scala
index 5d56fc19f00e1..f8d523fa2c6ae 100644
--- a/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/PipedRDDSuite.scala
+++ b/core/src/test/scala/org/apache/spark/rdd/PipedRDDSuite.scala
@@ -138,6 +138,14 @@ class PipedRDDSuite extends SparkFunSuite with SharedSparkContext {
     }
   }
 
+  test("pipe with empty partition") {
+    val data = sc.parallelize(Seq("foo", "bing"), 8)
+    val piped = data.pipe("wc -c")
+    assert(piped.count == 8)
+    val charCounts = piped.map(_.trim.toInt).collect().toSet
+    assert(Set(0, 4, 5) == charCounts)
+  }
+
   test("pipe with env variable") {
     if (testCommandAvailable("printenv")) {
       val nums = sc.makeRDD(Array(1, 2, 3, 4), 2)