DESCRIPTION

pipe() creates a pipe, a unidirectional data channel that can be used for interprocess communication. The array pipefd is used to return two file descriptors referring to the ends of the pipe. pipefd[0] refers to the read end of the pipe. pipefd[1] refers to the write end of the pipe. Data written to the write end of the pipe is buffered by the kernel until it is read from the read end of the pipe. For further details, see pipe(7).

If flags is 0, then pipe2() is the same as pipe(). The following values can be bitwise ORed in flags to obtain different behavior:

RETURN VALUE

On success, zero is returned. On error, −1 is returned, errno is set to indicate the error, and pipefd is left unchanged.

On Linux (and other systems), pipe() does not modify pipefd on failure. A requirement standardizing this behavior was added in POSIX.1-2008 TC2. The Linux-specific pipe2() system call likewise does not modify pipefd on failure.

ERRORS

VERSIONS

pipe2() was added to Linux in version 2.6.27; glibc support is available starting with version 2.9.

CONFORMING TO

pipe(): POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008.

pipe2() is Linux-specific.

NOTES

The System V ABI on some architectures allows the use of more than one register for returning multiple values; several architectures (namely, Alpha, IA-64, MIPS, SuperH, and SPARC/SPARC64) (ab)use this feature in order to implement the pipe() system call in a functional manner: the call doesn't take any arguments and returns a pair of file descriptors as the return value on success. The glibc pipe() wrapper function transparently deals with this. See syscall(2) for information regarding registers used for storing second file descriptor.

EXAMPLES

The following program creates a pipe, and then fork(2)s to create a child process; the child inherits a duplicate set of file descriptors that refer to the same pipe. After the fork(2), each process closes the file descriptors that it doesn't need for the pipe (see pipe(7)). The parent then writes the string contained in the program's command-line argument to the pipe, and the child reads this string a byte at a time from the pipe and echoes it on standard output.

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <string.h>

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    int pipefd[2];
    pid_t cpid;
    char buf;

    if (argc != 2) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s <string>\n", argv[0]);
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    if (pipe(pipefd) == −1) {
        perror("pipe");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    cpid = fork();
    if (cpid == −1) {
        perror("fork");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    if (cpid == 0) {    /* Child reads from pipe */
        close(pipefd[1]);          /* Close unused write end */

        while (read(pipefd[0], &buf, 1) > 0)
            write(STDOUT_FILENO, &buf, 1);

        write(STDOUT_FILENO, "\n", 1);
        close(pipefd[0]);
        _exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);

    } else {            /* Parent writes argv[1] to pipe */
        close(pipefd[0]);          /* Close unused read end */
        write(pipefd[1], argv[1], strlen(argv[1]));
        close(pipefd[1]);          /* Reader will see EOF */
        wait(NULL);                /* Wait for child */
        exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
    }
}

SEE ALSO

fork(2), read(2), socketpair(2), splice(2), tee(2), vmsplice(2), write(2), popen(3), pipe(7)