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PIPE(2) System Calls Manual PIPE(2) NAME pipe - create an interprocess channel SYNOPSIS int pipe(fildes) int fildes[2]; DESCRIPTION Pipe creates a buffered channel for interprocess I/O communication. Two file descriptors returned in fildes are the ends of pair of cross- connected streams; see stream(4). Data written via fildes[1] is avail- able for reading via fildes[0] and vice versa. After the pipe has been set up, cooperating processes created by subse- quent fork(2) calls may pass data through the pipe with read and write calls. The bytes placed on a pipe by one write are contiguous even if many process are writing. Writes induce a record structure: a read will not return bytes from more than one write; see read(2). Write calls on a one-ended pipe raise signal SIGPIPE. Read calls on a one-ended pipe with no data in it return an end-of-file for the first several attempts, then raise SIGPIPE, and eventually SIGKILL. SEE ALSO sh(1), fork(2), read(2), select(2), stream(4) DIAGNOSTICS EIO, EMFILE, ENFILE, ENXIO BUGS Buffering in pipes connecting multiple processes may cause deadlocks. Some line discipline modules discard the record delimiters inserted by write. On many other versions of the system, only fildes[0] may be read and only fildes[1] may be written. PIPE(2)