.
We have now began to see how multiple processes may be running on a machine and maybe be controlled (spawned by fork() by one of our programs.
In numerous applications there is clearly a need for these processes to communicate with each exchanging data or control information. There are a few methods which can accomplish this task. We will consider:
In this chapter, we will study the piping of two processes. We will study the others in turn in subsequent chapters.
Piping is a process where the output of one process is made the input of
another. We have seen examples of this from the UNIX command line using .
We will now see how we do this from C programs.
We will have two (or more) forked processes and will communicate
between them.
We must first open a pipe
UNIX allows two ways of opening a pipe.
FILE *popen(char *command, char *type) -- opens a pipe for I/O
where the command is the process that will be connected to the calling process
thus creating the pipe. The type is either "r" - for reading, or "w"
for writing.
popen() returns is a stream pointer or NULL for any errors.
A pipe opened by popen() should always be closed by pclose(FILE
*stream).
We use fprintf() and fscanf() to communicate with the pipe's stream.
int pipe(int fd[2]) -- creates a pipe and returns two file
descriptors, fd[0], fd[1]. fd[0] is opened for reading, fd[1]
for writing.
pipe() returns 0 on success, -1 on failure and sets errno
accordingly.
The standard programming model is that after the pipe has been set up, two (or
more) cooperative processes will be created by a fork and data will be
passed using read() and write().
Pipes opened with pipe() should be closed with close(int fd).
Example: Parent writes to a child
int pdes[2];
pipe(pdes);
if ( fork() == 0 )
{ /* child */
close(pdes[1]);
read( pdes[0]); /* read from parent */
.....
}
else
{ close(pdes[0]);
write( pdes[1]); /* write to child */
.....
}
An futher example of piping in a C program is plot.c and subroutines and it performs as follows:
The code listing for plot.c is:
/* plot.c - example of unix pipe. Calls gnuplot graph drawing package to draw
graphs from within a C program. Info is piped to gnuplot */
/* Creates 2 pipes one will draw graphs of y=0.5 and y = random 0-1.0 */
/* the other graphs of y = sin (1/x) and y = sin x */
/* Also user a plotter.c module */
/* compile: cc -o plot plot.c plotter.c */
#include "externals.h"
#include <signal.h>
#define DEG_TO_RAD(x) (x*180/M_PI)
double drand48();
void quit();
FILE *fp1, *fp2, *fp3, *fp4, *fopen();
main()
{ float i;
float y1,y2,y3,y4;
/* open files which will store plot data */
if ( ((fp1 = fopen("plot11.dat","w")) == NULL) ||
((fp2 = fopen("plot12.dat","w")) == NULL) ||
((fp3 = fopen("plot21.dat","w")) == NULL) ||
((fp4 = fopen("plot22.dat","w")) == NULL) )
{ printf("Error can't open one or more data files\n");
exit(1);
}
signal(SIGINT,quit); /* trap ctrl-c call quit fn */
StartPlot();
y1 = 0.5;
srand48(1); /* set seed */
for (i=0;;i+=0.01) /* increment i forever use ctrl-c to quit prog */
{ y2 = (float) drand48();
if (i == 0.0)
y3 = 0.0;
else
y3 = sin(DEG_TO_RAD(1.0/i));
y4 = sin(DEG_TO_RAD(i));
/* load files */
fprintf(fp1,"%f %f\n",i,y1);
fprintf(fp2,"%f %f\n",i,y2);
fprintf(fp3,"%f %f\n",i,y3);
fprintf(fp4,"%f %f\n",i,y4);
/* make sure buffers flushed so that gnuplot */
/* reads up to data file */
fflush(fp1);
fflush(fp2);
fflush(fp3);
fflush(fp4);
/* plot graph */
PlotOne();
usleep(250); /* sleep for short time */
}
}
void quit()
{ printf("\nctrl-c caught:\n Shutting down pipes\n");
StopPlot();
printf("closing data files\n");
fclose(fp1);
fclose(fp2);
fclose(fp3);
fclose(fp4);
printf("deleting data files\n");
RemoveDat();
}
The plotter.c module is as follows:
/* plotter.c module */
/* contains routines to plot a data file produced by another program */
/* 2d data plotted in this version */
/**********************************************************************/
#include "externals.h"
static FILE *plot1,
*plot2,
*ashell;
static char *startplot1 = "plot [] [0:1.1]'plot11.dat' with lines,
'plot12.dat' with lines\n";
static char *startplot2 = "plot 'plot21.dat' with lines,
'plot22.dat' with lines\n";
static char *replot = "replot\n";
static char *command1= "/usr/local/bin/gnuplot> dump1";
static char *command2= "/usr/local/bin/gnuplot> dump2";
static char *deletefiles = "rm plot11.dat plot12.dat plot21.dat plot22.dat";
static char *set_term = "set terminal x11\n";
void
StartPlot(void)
{ plot1 = popen(command1, "w");
fprintf(plot1, "%s", set_term);
fflush(plot1);
if (plot1 == NULL)
exit(2);
plot2 = popen(command2, "w");
fprintf(plot2, "%s", set_term);
fflush(plot2);
if (plot2 == NULL)
exit(2);
}
void
RemoveDat(void)
{ ashell = popen(deletefiles, "w");
exit(0);
}
void
StopPlot(void)
{ pclose(plot1);
pclose(plot2);
}
void
PlotOne(void)
{ fprintf(plot1, "%s", startplot1);
fflush(plot1);
fprintf(plot2, "%s", startplot2);
fflush(plot2);
}
void
RePlot(void)
{ fprintf(plot1, "%s", replot);
fflush(plot1);
}
The header file externals.h contains the following:
/* externals.h */ #ifndef EXTERNALS #define EXTERNALS #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <math.h> /* prototypes */ void StartPlot(void); void RemoveDat(void); void StopPlot(void); void PlotOne(void); void RePlot(void); #endif
Exercise 12733
Setup a two-way pipe between parent and child processes in a C program. i.e. both can send and receive signals.