pipe() and dup()... (stdin/stdout)

coldworld

The following code is example code of the book "Beginning Linux Programming 3rd Edition" ....
I've compiled and ran it...it's work...
Can anyone tell me why the child process can read data from file_pipes[0] while thd file_pipes[0] was closed...

================================================== ====
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>

int main()
{
int data_processed;
int file_pipes[2];
const char some_data[] = "123";
pid_t fork_result;

if (pipe(file_pipes) == 0) {
fork_result = fork();
if (fork_result == (pid_t)-1) {
fprintf(stderr, "Fork failure");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}

if (fork_result == (pid_t)0) {
close(0);
dup(file_pipes[0]);
close(file_pipes[0]); //Here!!!!...I don't know why?
close(file_pipes[1]);

execlp("od", "od", "-c", (char *)0);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
else {
close(file_pipes[0]);
data_processed = write(file_pipes[1], some_data,
strlen(some_data));
close(file_pipes[1]);
printf("%d - wrote %d bytes\n", (int)getpid(), data_processed);
}
}
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}

Oct 3 '06 #1

tyreld

What is happening is a bit subtle. The "dup" function is the strange culprit. What is basically happening is that the child process is closing stdin and then reassigning stdin to the pipe stream pointed to by file_pipes[0]. We now have 2 seperate file descriptors pointing at the pipe stream. Closing one doesn't close both. So, when you close file_pipes[0] the stdin stream can still be read from.

Oct 3 '06 #2