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Description

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 example.

A FIFO (short for First In First Out) has a name within the filesystem (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 filesystem, I/O on FIFOs does not involve operations on the underlying device (if there is one).

I/O on pipes and FIFOs

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

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. Since Linux 2.6.35, the default pipe capacity is 65536 bytes, but the capacity can be queried and set using the fcntl(2) F_GETPIPE_SZ and F_SETPIPE_SZ operations. See fcntl(2) for more information.

Pipe_buf

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

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

See Also

Colophon

Table of Contents

• Name
• Description
• I/O on pipes and FIFOs
• Pipe capacity
• Pipe_buf
• Open file status flags
• Portability notes
• See Also
• Colophon