How to send a simple string between two programs using pipes?

Question

A regular pipe can only connect two related processes. It is created by a process and will vanish when the last process closes it.

A named pipe, also called a FIFO for its behavior, can be used to connect two unrelated processes and exists independently of the processes; meaning it can exist even if no one is using it. A FIFO is created using the mkfifo() library function.

Example

writer.c

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main()
{
    int fd;
    char * myfifo = "/tmp/myfifo";

    /* create the FIFO (named pipe) */
    mkfifo(myfifo, 0666);

    /* write "Hi" to the FIFO */
    fd = open(myfifo, O_WRONLY);
    write(fd, "Hi", sizeof("Hi"));
    close(fd);

    /* remove the FIFO */
    unlink(myfifo);

    return 0;
}

reader.c

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>

#define MAX_BUF 1024

int main()
{
    int fd;
    char * myfifo = "/tmp/myfifo";
    char buf[MAX_BUF];

    /* open, read, and display the message from the FIFO */
    fd = open(myfifo, O_RDONLY);
    read(fd, buf, MAX_BUF);
    printf("Received: %s\n", buf);
    close(fd);

    return 0;
}

_{Note: Error checking was omitted from the above code for simplicity.}

From Creating Pipes in C, this shows you how to fork a program to use a pipe. If you don't want to fork(), you can use named pipes.

In addition, you can get the effect of prog1 | prog2 by sending output of prog1 to stdout and reading from stdin in prog2. You can also read stdin by opening a file named /dev/stdin (but not sure of the portability of that).

/*****************************************************************************
 Excerpt from "Linux Programmer's Guide - Chapter 6"
 (C)opyright 1994-1995, Scott Burkett
 ***************************************************************************** 
 MODULE: pipe.c
 *****************************************************************************/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>

int main(void)
{
        int     fd[2], nbytes;
        pid_t   childpid;
        char    string[] = "Hello, world!\n";
        char    readbuffer[80];

        pipe(fd);

        if((childpid = fork()) == -1)
        {
                perror("fork");
                exit(1);
        }

        if(childpid == 0)
        {
                /* Child process closes up input side of pipe */
                close(fd[0]);

                /* Send "string" through the output side of pipe */
                write(fd[1], string, (strlen(string)+1));
                exit(0);
        }
        else
        {
                /* Parent process closes up output side of pipe */
                close(fd[1]);

                /* Read in a string from the pipe */
                nbytes = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
                printf("Received string: %s", readbuffer);
        }

        return(0);
}

dup2( STDIN_FILENO, newfd )

And read:

char reading[ 1025 ];
int fdin = 0, r_control;
if( dup2( STDIN_FILENO, fdin ) < 0 ){
    perror( "dup2(  )" );
    exit( errno );
}
memset( reading, '\0', 1025 );
while( ( r_control = read( fdin, reading, 1024 ) ) > 0 ){
    printf( "<%s>", reading );
    memset( reading, '\0', 1025 );
}
if( r_control < 0 )
    perror( "read(  )" );    
close( fdin );    

But, I think that fcntl can be a better solution

echo "salut" | code

What one program writes to stdout can be read by another via stdin. So simply, using c, write prog1 to print something using printf() and prog2 to read something using scanf(). Then just run

./prog1 | ./prog2

Here's a sample:

int main()
{
    char buff[1024] = {0};
    FILE* cvt;
    int status;
    /* Launch converter and open a pipe through which the parent will write to it */
    cvt = popen("converter", "w");
    if (!cvt)
    {
        printf("couldn't open a pipe; quitting\n");
        exit(1)
    }
    printf("enter Fahrenheit degrees: " );
    fgets(buff, sizeof (buff), stdin); /*read user's input */
    /* Send expression to converter for evaluation */
    fprintf(cvt, "%s\n", buff);
    fflush(cvt);
    /* Close pipe to converter and wait for it to exit */
    status=pclose(cvt);
    /* Check the exit status of pclose() */
    if (!WIFEXITED(status))
        printf("error on closing the pipe\n");
    return 0;
}

The important steps in this program are:

1. The popen() call which establishes the association between a child process and a pipe in the parent.
2. The fprintf() call that uses the pipe as an ordinary file to write to the child process's stdin or read from its stdout.
3. The pclose() call that closes the pipe and causes the child process to terminate.