How to wait till data is written on the other end of pipe

Question

I am developing an application in C. Parent and child process communicate through pipe. Before writing to pipe, parent process execute another statements. In sample code, i have used sleep(10) to make delay. In the child process, it should read the data from the pipe. But data is not read on the read end of pipe in child process.

int main()
{
    int pid;
    FILE *fp;
    fp = fopen("test.txt","w");
    char *buff;
    int fd[2];
    int count = 0 ;
    pipe(fd);
    pid = fork();
    if(pid == 0)
    {
        close(fd[1]);
        ioctl(fd[0], FIONREAD, &count);
        fprintf(fp,"Value of count: %d ",count);
        buff = malloc(count);
        fprintf(fp,"\n TIME before read: %s",__TIME__);
        read(fd[0], buff, count);
        fprintf(fp,"\nbuffer: %s\n TIME after read %s", buff, __TIME__);
    }
    else{
        close(fd[0]);
        sleep(10);    //delay caused by application specific code replaced with sleep
        write(fd[1],"THIS is it",10);
    }
    fclose(fp);
    return 0;
}

How to make child process wait till data is written on the other end?

Answer 1

Your pipe is opened in blocking mode, and you do nothing to change that, which is likely what you intended.

However, since the first thing you do is request the size of data waiting on the pipe, then blindly jump into reading that many bytes (which in all likelihood will be zero at the time that code executes since the parent hasn't written anything yet) you don't block, and instead just leave because you requested nothing.

There are a number of ways to do this, including a select-loop. If you would rather block on a read until data is available, then do so on a single byte and fill in the remaining data afterward.

This is by no means an example of how to do this right, but it is a short sample of how you can wait on a single byte, request the read-size of the pipe to get the rest of the data, read it, and continue this until the pipe has no data left and the parent shuts down their end:

I hope you find it helpful.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>

int main()
{
    int pid = 0;

    // create pipe pair
    int fd[2];
    pipe(fd);

    pid = fork();
    if (pid == 0)
    {
        // child side
        char *buff = NULL;
        char byte = 0;
        int count = 0;

        // close write side. don't need it.
        close(fd[1]);

        // read at least one byte from the pipe.
        while (read(fd[0], &byte, 1) == 1)
        {
            if (ioctl(fd[0], FIONREAD, &count) != -1)
            {
                fprintf(stdout,"Child: count = %d\n",count);

                // allocate space for the byte we just read + the rest
                //  of whatever is on the pipe.
                buff = malloc(count+1);
                buff[0] = byte;
                if (read(fd[0], buff+1, count) == count)
                    fprintf(stdout,"Child: received \"%s\"\n", buff);
                free(buff);
            }
            else
            {   // could not read in-size
                perror("Failed to read input size.");
            }
        }

        // close our side
        close(fd[0]);
        fprintf(stdout,"Child: Shutting down.\n");
    }
    else
    {   // close read size. don't need it.
        const char msg1[] = "Message From Parent";
        const char msg2[] = "Another Message From Parent";
        close(fd[0]);
        sleep(5); // simulate process wait
        fprintf(stdout, "Parent: sending \"%s\"\n", msg1);
        write(fd[1], msg1, sizeof(msg1));
        sleep(5); // simulate process wait
        fprintf(stdout, "Parent: sending \"%s\"\n", msg2);
        write(fd[1], msg2, sizeof(msg2));
        close(fd[1]);
        fprintf(stdout,"Parent: Shutting down.\n");
    }
    return 0;
}

---

Output

Parent: sending "Message From Parent"
Child: count = 19
Child: received "Message From Parent"
Parent: sending "Another Message From Parent"
Parent: Shutting down.
Child: count = 27
Child: received "Another Message From Parent"
Child: Shutting down.

Answer 2

I think after

ioctl(fd[0], FIONREAD, &count);  
the count is 0.  

read(fd[0], buff, count) will get no data.  

try   
read(fd[0], buff, 10)