[lug] Named pipe and network tool?

[rm at mamma.varadinet.de]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 09:58:18PM -0600, Chris Riddoch wrote:
> 
> Yeah. Any program that reads and writes files doesn't care what *kind*
> of file it is, in most cases, as long as it's a file that can be read
> and written to.  (for the most part) Even 'cat' could do it.  It's The
> Unix Way(TM).  /dev/hda can be treated like a file, though you might
> not *want* to, you *could* use "grep" on /dev/hda.  (Naturally, there
> are usually better ways to handle certain tasks.  But it's possible!)

Hmm, not neccessarily though. This used to be the case in the early days
of *NIX. The whole concept fails as soon as the reading program calls
'stat(2)' to get the size of the "file". Some MUA  do this with the 
signature file and hence can't use a named pipe. Also, nowadays many 
programs gobble up the whole file with 'mmap(2)' (esp. those who expect
largish data files).  Those applications will call 'stat' as well and 
will get a file size of 0 bytes ....  YMMV.

I'm far away from my copy of Stevens but if memory serves me right
you also need some special care to deal with signals if you use pipes
instead of "real" files. If the receiving program terminates and the
sending program continues to write to the pipe it'll receive a SIGPIPE.
Unless you prepare for this case by installing a signal handler the default
action as spec. by POSIX will trigger -- your app will terminate.


 Ralf