Manpages - pipe.2

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUE
ERRORS
VERSIONS
CONFORMING TO
NOTES
EXAMPLES
- Program source
SEE ALSO
COLOPHON

NAME

pipe, pipe2 - create pipe

SYNOPSIS

  #include <unistd.h>

  int pipe(int pipefd[2]);

  #define _GNU_SOURCE /* See feature_test_macros(7) */
  #include <fcntl.h> /* Definition of O_* constants */
  #include <unistd.h>

  int pipe2(int pipefd[2], int flags);

  /* On Alpha, IA-64, MIPS, SuperH, and SPARC/SPARC64, pipe() has the
     following prototype; see NOTES */

  #include <unistd.h>

  struct fd_pair {
   long fd[2];
  };
  struct fd_pair pipe(void);

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:

O_CLOEXEC

Set the close-on-exec (FD_CLOEXEC) flag on the two new file descriptors. See the description of the same flag in *open*(2) for reasons why this may be useful.

O_DIRECT (since Linux 3.4)

Create a pipe that performs I/O in “packet” mode. Each *write*(2) to the pipe is dealt with as a separate packet, and *read*(2)s from the pipe will read one packet at a time. Note the following points:

Writes of greater than PIPE_BUF bytes (see pipe*(7)) will be split into multiple packets. The constant *PIPE_BUF is defined in <limits.h>.
If a read*(2) specifies a buffer size that is smaller than the next packet, then the requested number of bytes are read, and the excess bytes in the packet are discarded. Specifying a buffer size of *PIPE_BUF will be sufficient to read the largest possible packets (see the previous point).
Zero-length packets are not supported. (A *read*(2) that specifies a buffer size of zero is a no-op, and returns 0.)

Older kernels that do not support this flag will indicate this via an EINVAL error.

Since Linux 4.5, it is possible to change the O_DIRECT setting of a pipe file descriptor using *fcntl*(2).

O_NONBLOCK

Set the O_NONBLOCK file status flag on the open file descriptions referred to by the new file descriptors. Using this flag saves extra calls to *fcntl*(2) to achieve the same result.

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

EFAULT: pipefd is not valid.
EINVAL: (*pipe2*()) Invalid value in flags.
EMFILE: The per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has been reached.
ENFILE: The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been reached.
ENFILE: The user hard limit on memory that can be allocated for pipes has been reached and the caller is not privileged; see *pipe*(7).

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.

Program source

  #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);
      }
  }

COLOPHON

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