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The basic use of NamedPipes is:
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The basic use of NamedPipes is:

How to write several times to a fifo without having to reopen it?

The basic use of NamedPipes is:

mkfifo myfifo
cat < myfifo &
echo 'a' > myfifo

This works, but cat dies after reading one line. (In fact, what happens is each time the named pipe is closed by the writer, this signals an end of file condition for the reader. So cat, the reader, terminates because it saw the end of its input.)

What if we want to write several times to the pipe without having to restart the reader? We have to arrange for all our data to be sent without opening and closing the pipe multiple times.

If the commands are consecutive, they can be grouped:

cat < myfifo &
{ echo 'a'; echo 'b'; echo 'c'; } > myfifo

But if they can't be grouped for some reason, a better way is to assign a file descriptor to the pipe and write there:

cat < myfifo &

# assigning fd 3 to the pipe
exec 3>myfifo

# writing to fd 3 instead of reopening the pipe
echo 'a' >&3
echo 'b' >&3
echo 'c' >&3

# closing the fd
exec 3>&-

Closing the fd causes the pipe's reader to receive the end of file indication.

BashFAQ/085 (last edited 2016-10-17 20:45:47 by 163-172-21-117)