[problem]
You want to create and use an UNIX FIFO.
[/problem]
[solution]
FIFO means first in, first out.
To create a FIFO (also called a named pipe), UNIX supplies the mknod command.
[/solution]
[example]
This is the code to generate a FIFO:
$ mknod myFIFO p
Then the resulting named pipe:
$ ls -ld myFIFO
prw-r--r-- 1 marcus adm 0 Jun 13 21:15 myFIFO
To use the FIFO, you need to have a process that is reading from it. This could be a bit of Perl, C code, etc.
A perfect way to demonstrate using FIFOs, is tail -f:
$ tail -f myFIFO
Then a test:
$ echo "
Hello there
This is a test of FIFOs
" > myFIFO
From the tail -f when now see following output:
Hello there
This is a test of FIFOs
[/example]
[reference]
– as always an excellent description on wikipedia
[/reference]
[reference]
[tags]FIFO, Named Pipes, mknod, Unix Coding School[/tags]
[/reference]
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