PIPE(7) 						     Linux Programmer's Manual							   PIPE(7)

NAME

       pipe - overview of pipes and FIFOs

DESCRIPTION

       Pipes and FIFOs (also known as named pipes) provide a unidirectional interprocess communication channel.  A pipe has a read end and a write
       end.  Data written to the write end of a pipe can be read from the read end of the pipe.

       A pipe is created using pipe(2), which creates a new pipe and returns two file descriptors, one referring to the read end of the pipe,  the
       other  referring to the write end.  Pipes can be used to create a communication channel between related processes; see pipe(2) for an exam-
       ple.

       A FIFO (short for First In First Out) has a name within the file system (created using  mkfifo(3)),  and  is  opened  using  open(2).   Any
       process	may  open a FIFO, assuming the file permissions allow it.  The read end is opened using the O_RDONLY flag; the write end is opened
       using the O_WRONLY flag.  See fifo(7) for further details.  Note: although FIFOs have a pathname in the file system, I/O on FIFOs does  not
       involve operations on the underlying device (if there is one).

   I/O on Pipes and FIFOs
       The  only  difference between pipes and FIFOs is the manner in which they are created and opened.  Once these tasks have been accomplished,
       I/O on pipes and FIFOs has exactly the same semantics.

       If a process attempts to read from an empty pipe, then read(2) will block until data is available.  If a process attempts  to  write  to  a
       full  pipe (see below), then write(2) blocks until sufficient data has been read from the pipe to allow the write to complete.  Nonblocking
       I/O is possible by using the fcntl(2) F_SETFL operation to enable the O_NONBLOCK open file status flag.

       The communication channel provided by a pipe is a byte stream: there is no concept of message boundaries.

       If all file descriptors referring to the write end of a pipe have been closed, then an attempt to read(2) from the pipe	will  see  end-of-
       file  (read(2)  will return 0).	If all file descriptors referring to the read end of a pipe have been closed, then a write(2) will cause a
       SIGPIPE signal to be generated for the calling process.	If the calling process is ignoring this signal, then write(2) fails with the error
       EPIPE.	An  application  that uses pipe(2) and fork(2) should use suitable close(2) calls to close unnecessary duplicate file descriptors;
       this ensures that end-of-file and SIGPIPE/EPIPE are delivered when appropriate.

       It is not possible to apply lseek(2) to a pipe.

   Pipe Capacity
       A pipe has a limited capacity.  If the pipe is full, then a write(2) will block or fail, depending on whether the O_NONBLOCK  flag  is  set
       (see  below).   Different implementations have different limits for the pipe capacity.  Applications should not rely on a particular capac-
       ity: an application should be designed so that a reading process consumes data as soon as it is available, so that a writing  process  does
       not remain blocked.

       In  Linux  versions  before  2.6.11,  the  capacity of a pipe was the same as the system page size (e.g., 4096 bytes on i386).  Since Linux
       2.6.11, the pipe capacity is 65536 bytes.

   PIPE_BUF
       POSIX.1-2001 says that write(2)s of less than PIPE_BUF bytes must be atomic: the output data  is  written  to  the  pipe  as  a	contiguous
       sequence.   Writes  of  more than PIPE_BUF bytes may be nonatomic: the kernel may interleave the data with data written by other processes.
       POSIX.1-2001 requires PIPE_BUF to be at least 512 bytes.  (On Linux, PIPE_BUF is 4096 bytes.)  The precise semantics depend on whether  the
       file descriptor is nonblocking (O_NONBLOCK), whether there are multiple writers to the pipe, and on n, the number of bytes to be written:

       O_NONBLOCK disabled, n <= PIPE_BUF
	      All n bytes are written atomically; write(2) may block if there is not room for n bytes to be written immediately

       O_NONBLOCK enabled, n <= PIPE_BUF
	      If  there  is  room to write n bytes to the pipe, then write(2) succeeds immediately, writing all n bytes; otherwise write(2) fails,
	      with errno set to EAGAIN.

       O_NONBLOCK disabled, n > PIPE_BUF
	      The write is nonatomic: the data given to write(2) may be interleaved with write(2)s by other process; the write(2) blocks  until  n
	      bytes have been written.

       O_NONBLOCK enabled, n > PIPE_BUF
	      If  the  pipe is full, then write(2) fails, with errno set to EAGAIN.  Otherwise, from 1 to n bytes may be written (i.e., a "partial
	      write" may occur; the caller should check the return value from write(2) to see how many bytes were  actually  written),	and  these
	      bytes may be interleaved with writes by other processes.

   Open File Status Flags
       The only open file status flags that can be meaningfully applied to a pipe or FIFO are O_NONBLOCK and O_ASYNC.

       Setting	the O_ASYNC flag for the read end of a pipe causes a signal (SIGIO by default) to be generated when new input becomes available on
       the pipe (see fcntl(2) for details).  On Linux, O_ASYNC is supported for pipes and FIFOs only since kernel 2.6.

   Portability notes
       On some systems (but not Linux), pipes are bidirectional: data can be transmitted in both directions between the pipe ends.   According	to
       POSIX.1-2001, pipes only need to be unidirectional.  Portable applications should avoid reliance on bidirectional pipe semantics.

SEE ALSO

       dup(2), fcntl(2), open(2), pipe(2), poll(2), select(2), socketpair(2), stat(2), mkfifo(3), epoll(7), fifo(7)

COLOPHON

       This  page is part of release 3.44 of the Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux								    2005-12-08								   PIPE(7)