Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!emory!mephisto!mcnc!uvaarpa!mmdf
From: worley@compass.com (Dale Worley)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: RTFM
Message-ID: <1990Jul17.145422.16670@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU>
Date: 17 Jul 90 14:54:22 GMT
Sender: mmdf@uvaarpa.Virginia.EDU (Uvaarpa Mail System)
Reply-To: worley@compass.com
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

The secret to opening pipes is to use the pipe() function, added in
patch 9.  Unfortunately, the ASCIIized copy of the man page that I
grepped for 'pipe' is pre-patch 9, so I didn't see pipe().  For others
who might find it useful:

pipe(READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE)

Opens a pair of connected pipes like the corresponding system call.
Note that if you set up a loop of piped processes, deadlock can occur
unless you are very careful.
In addition, note that perl's pipes use stdio buffering, so you may need
to set $| to flush your WRITEHANDLE after each command, depending on
the application.
[Requires version 3.0 patchlevel 9.]

Dale Worley		Compass, Inc.			worley@compass.com
--
LA, truth to tell, is not much different from a pretty girl with the clap.