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Pipes

Pipes allow for one-way communication between processes by connecting the standard output of one process to the standard input of another. The pipe system call creates a pipe, which is a buffer in main memory used to transfer data between the two processes. The pipe call returns two file descriptors - one for reading from the pipe and one for writing to it. Only data written to the pipe can be read from it, and a process must wait to read until something is written. Pipes have a fixed size buffer and operate on a first-in, first-out basis.

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66 views2 pages

Pipes

Pipes allow for one-way communication between processes by connecting the standard output of one process to the standard input of another. The pipe system call creates a pipe, which is a buffer in main memory used to transfer data between the two processes. The pipe call returns two file descriptors - one for reading from the pipe and one for writing to it. Only data written to the pipe can be read from it, and a process must wait to read until something is written. Pipes have a fixed size buffer and operate on a first-in, first-out basis.

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santanu00729
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Pipes

Conceptually, a pipe is a connection between two processes, such that the standard output from one process becomes the standard input of the other process It is possible to have a series of processes arranged in a a pipeline, with a pipe between each pair of processes in the series. Implementation: A pipe can be implemented as a 10k buffer in main memory with 2 pointers, one for the FROM process and one for TO process One process cannot read from the buffer until another has written to it The UNIX command-line interpreter (e.g., csh) provide a pipe facility. o % prog | more o This command runs the prog1 program and send its output to the more program.

Pipe System Call

pipe() is a system call that facilitates inter-process communication. It opens a pipe, which is an area of main memory that is treated as a "virtual file". The pipe can be used by the creating process, as well as all its child processes, for reading and writing. One process can write to this "virtual file" or pipe and another related process can read from it. If a process tries to read before something is written to the pipe, the process is suspended until something is written. The pipe system call finds the first two available positions in the process's open file table and allocates them for the read and write ends of the pipe. Recall that the open system call allocates only one position in the open file table.
#include <unistd.h> int pip[2]; (void) pipe(pip);

Syntax in a C/C++ program:

With error checking:


#include <unistd.h> int pip[2]; int result; result = pipe(pip); if (result == -1) { perror("pipe"); exit(1); }

Programming notes:

The pipe() system call is passed a pointer to the beginning of an array of two integers. It appears in C/C++ as if pipe() is passed the name of the array without any brackets. The system call places two integers into this array. These integers are the file descriptors of the first two available locations in the open file table. pip[0] - the read end of the pipe - is a file descriptor used to read from the pipe pip[1] - the write end of the pipe - is a file descriptor used to write to the pipe

The buffer size for the pipe is fixed. Once it is full all further writes are blocked. Pipes work on a first in first out basis.
In computer programming, especially in UNIX operating systems, a pipe is a technique for passing information from one program process to another. Unlike other forms of interprocess communication (IPC), a pipe is one-way communication only. Basically, a pipe passes a parameter such as the output of one process to another process which accepts it as input. The system temporarily holds the piped information until it is read by the receiving process. Using a UNIX shell (the UNIX interactive command interface), a pipe is specified in a command line as a simple vertical bar (|) between two command sequences. The output or result of the first command sequence is used as the input to the second command sequence. The pipe system call is used in a similar way within a program. For two-way communication between processes, two pipes can be set up, one for each direction. A limitation of pipes for interprocess communication is that the processes using pipes must have a common parent process (that is, share a common open or initiation process and exist as the result of a fork system call from a parent process). A pipe is fixed in size and is usually at least 4,096 bytes.

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