1. TLPI - Chapter 44
Pipe and Fifos
Shu-Yu Fu (shuyufu at gmail.com)

2. Pipes
● Pipes can be used to pass data between
related processes.
$ ls | wc -l

3. Important Characteristics of Pipes
● A pipe is a byte stream
● Reading from a pipe
● Pipes are unidirectional
● Writes of up to PIPE_BUF bytes are
guaranteed to be atomic
○ using fpathconf(fd, _PC_PIPE_BUF) to return the
actual upper limit
● Pipes have a limited capacity
○ using fcntl(fd, F_SETPIPE_SZ, size) to change the
capacity of the pipe referred to by fd
○ using fcntl(fd, F_GETPIPE_SZ) to get the capacity of
the pipe referred to by fd

4. Creating and Using Pipes
#include <unistd.h>
int pipe(int filedes[2]);

5. Creating and Using Pipes (cont.)
● We can also use the stdio functions (printf(),
scanf(), and so on) with pipes by first using
fdopen() to obtain a file stream corresponding
to one of the descriptors in fieldes.
○ Using ioctl(fd, FIONREAD, &cnt) to get the number of
unread bytes in the pipe referred to by fd

6. A pipe has few uses within a single
process

7. A pipe has few uses within a single
process (cont.)
● If we require bidirectional communication,
there is a simpler way: just create two pipes,
one for sending data in each direction
between the two processes.
○ deadlocks may occur if both processes block while
trying to read from empty pipes or while trying to
write to pipes that are already full

8. Closing unused pipe file descriptors
● Ensuring a process doesn't exhaust its limited set of file
descriptors.
● It is only after all file descriptors in all processes that refer to
a pipe are closed that the pipe is destroyed.

9. Pipes as a Method of Process
Synchronization
● Listing 44-3: Using a pipe to synchronize
multiple processes
● It can be used to coordinate the actions of
one process with multiple other (related)
processes.
● The fact that multiple (standard) signals can't
be queued makes signals unsuitable in this
case. But signals can be broadcasted by one
process to all of the members of a process
group.

10. Using Pipes to Connect Filters
● Listing 44-4: Using a pipe to connect ls and
wc
● dup2() allows us to explicitly specify the
descriptor to be bound
int pfd[2];
pipe(pfd);
if (pfd[1] != STDOUT_FILENO) {
dup2(pfd[1], STDOUT_FILENO);
close(pfd[1];
}

11. Talking to a Shell Command via a
Pipe: popen()
#include <stdio.h>
FILE *popen(const char *command, const char *mode);
int pclose(FILE *stream);

12. Pipes and stdio Buffering
● Since the file stream pointer returned by a
call to popen() doesn't refer to a terminal, the
stdio library applies block buffering to the file
stream.

13. Pipes and stdio Buffering (cont.)
● When we call popen() with a mode of w, then
output is sent to the child process only when
the stdio buffer is filled or we close the pipe
with pclose().
○ using fflush() or setbuf(fp, NULL) to ensure the child
process receives data immediately.

14. Pipes and stdio Buffering (cont.)
● If the process calling popen() is reading from
the pipe, things may not be so
straightforward.
○ Modifying the source code to include calls to setbuf()
or fflush().
○ Using pseudoterminal (Chapter 64)

15. FIFOs
● FIFOs are a variation on the pipe concept. The
important difference is that FIFOs can be used
for communication between any processes.
● A FIFO has a name within the file system
and is opened in the same way as a regular
file.
$ mkfifo [ -m mode ] pathname
or
#include <sys/stat.h>
int mkfifo(const char *pathname, mode_t mode);

16. FIFOs (cont.)
● Opening a FIFO for reading blocks until
another process opens the IFO for writing,
and vice versa for writing.
○ Using O_NONBLOCK flag to prevent blocking.
● Using FIFOs and tee(1) to create a dual
pipeline
$ mkfifo myfifo
$ wc -l < myfifo &
$ ls -l | tee myfifo | sort -k5n

17. Nonblocking I/O (O_NONBLOCK flag)
● open()
○ It allows a single process to open both ends of a
FIFO.
○ It prevents deadlocks between processes opening
two FIFOs.

18. Nonblocking I/O (O_NONBLOCK flag)
● A deadlock
● O_NONBLOCK affects the semantics of
subsequent read() and write() calls.
○ Using fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, flags) to enable/disable
O_NONBLOCK bit.

19. Semantics of read() and write() on
Pipes and FIFOs
● read()

20. Semantics of read() and write() on
Pipes and FIFOs (cont.)
● write()