UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a script1.ksh that calls another script2.ksh and redirects and appends script2.ksh's output to a file:

#script1.ksh
...
script2.ksh >> outfile
...

#script2.ksh
...
echo value1 value2 value3 ...valuen
....

Suppose I have many script1.ksh processes running at the same
time. Is it possible that file "outfile" can be corrupted if multiple
scripts/processes are writing to it at the same time?

If not corrupted, is it possible that the values written by echo
are interrupted such that the output values are interleaved with
values from the other processes?

Perhaps a simpler way of asking this question is whether the
redirection operators > and >> are atomic (ie non-interruptable)?

Thanks again,
ragtopgeek
PS - Sorry about the verbosity of my question, but you can thank
the public schools for that.

1) dont blame schools for your explanation skills
2) yes its interuptable
3) i have not tested it but if you have 2 parrallel processes dumping to a file they should each dump as soon as they get a chance. so yes the data may be interweaved.

Thanks for the info Optimus_P, but I want to make sure I understand completely. Are you saying that the output from
the same echo command can be interleaved with the output
from another process' same echo command? For example:
#script1.ksh
...
script2.ksh >> outfile
...

# script2.ksh
...
# echo my pid five times
echo $$ $$ $$ $$ $$
...

If one process has pid 1111 and another has 9999, then is it
possible that instead of output file having:
1111 1111 1111 1111
9999 9999 9999 9999
that it may have
1111 1111 9999 1111 9999 9999 9999 1111 9999 1111
(not sure how the new lines would work).

So a specific echo command can be interrupted?

Thanks again,
ragtopgeek

i have not tested it but i do beleave so.

Remember that programs use system calls to get stuff done. So you gotta look at this from the system call level.

If two processes both have the same file opened in append mode are both are writing to it, each write system call will be atomic. The data from two writes will never be inter-mingled.

But
echo $$ $$ $$ $$
will probably be 4 writes, one for each arg. If so, they could get inter-mingled as you show. On the other hand:
echo "$$ $$ $$ $$"
which sends one argument to echo, has a better shot of getting a single write. But it all really depends on how echo was written.

It is a common technique for many processes to open an error file in append mode, then write a line to it with a single write system call.

Thanks! I was reading Steven's "Unix System Programming..."
book last night to get some insight. You are right in that it
depends on how the individual output commands are
implemented with regard to using system i/o functions.

I am playing around with trying to create/get interleaved
results. If I have any luck, I'll post.

I acheived perfect interleaving with a small script and a wrapper script.
Wrapper

Code:

#!/bin/bash
/tmp/prog one &
/tmp/prog two &

Script /tmp/prog

Code:

#!/bin/bash
A=1
until [ $A -eq 1000 ]
do
echo $1 >> /tmp/testfile
A=`expr $A + 1`
done

I am sure there is a better way to incorporate this into one script.