- Anonymous pipe
In
computer science , an anonymous pipe is a simplexFIFO communication channel that may be used for one-wayinterprocess communication . An implementation is often integrated into theoperating system 's file IO subsystem. Typically a parent program opens anonymous pipes, and creates a new process that inherits the other ends of the pipes, or creates several new processes and arranges them in a pipeline.Two anonymous pipes are required for
full-duplex (two-way) communication.Unix
Pipelines are an important part of many
Unix applications and support for them is well-integrated into mostUnix-like operating systems. Pipes are created using thepipe()system call , which creates a new pipe and returns a pair of file descriptors referring to the read and write ends of the pipe. In aUnix shell a pipeline is created using the "|" character and many Unix programs are designed as filters to work with pipes.Microsoft Windows
Like many other device IO and IPC facilities in the
Microsoft Windows Win32 API , anonymous pipes are created and configured with API functions specific to the IO facility. In this caseCreatePipeis used to create an anonymous pipe with separate handles for the read and write ends of the pipe. Read and write IO operations on the pipe may use the standard IO facility API functionsReadFileandWriteFile.On Microsoft Windows, reads and writes to anonymous pipes are always blocking. In other words, a read from an empty pipe will block in the call until either one or more bytes arrive, or the pipe is closed and an
end-of-file is sent. Likewise, a write to a full pipe will block in the call until space becomes available to store the data being written. Reads may return with fewer than the number of bytes requested, otherwise known as a short-read.New processes may inherit handles to anonymous pipes in the creation process. The new process simply needs a way of identifying the handle that it inherited.
Summary of anonymous pipes on Microsoft Windows:
* Intramachine IPC only
* Simplex (one-way)
*Byte-oriented IO
* Reliable
* Read and write always blocking
* Short-Read (successful reads may return less than the number of bytes requested) (Is also short-write?)
* Standard device IO handles (FileRead,FileWrite)
* Inheritable handles (CreateProcess)See also
*
Named pipe
*Pipeline (Unix) References
* Hart, Johnson M. "Windows System Programming, Third Edition." Addison-Wesley, 2005. ISBN 0-321-25619-0
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