Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!madd
From: madd@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Jim Frost)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Public Domain version of: yes(1)
Message-ID: <21563@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 12 Apr 88 21:09:29 GMT
References: <2797@crash.cts.com>
Reply-To: madd@bu-it.bu.edu (Jim Frost)
Followup-To: comp.os.minix
Organization: Boston University Distributed Systems Group
Lines: 23

In article <2797@crash.cts.com> cline@pnet01.cts.com (Ben Humphreys) writes:
|>	yes | rm filenames...
|
|If yes's output has to complete before rm's processing is to begin, how does
|yes know when to stop (forgive such a niave question please)?

Forgive such a simple answer, but:

MINIX multitasks; both commands run simultaneously.  This is unlike
MS-DOS which accomplishes piping by saving output in a file until the
first program finishes and then running the second, basically the
same as:

	% command1 >tmpfile; command2 <tmpfile

It works the same except when you really expect both programs to
operate at the same time.

For those who haven't tried it, try writing popen()/pclose() under
MS-DOS.  It's educational.

jim frost
madd@bu-it.bu.edu