in reply to Re: What is a pipe and why would I want to use one?
in thread What is a pipe and why would I want to use one?

This is a very very simple (and probably Linuxcentric) attempt to illustrate how you can send data from one program to another using a pipe:

./Daddy.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl $i=0; open SESAME,"|./Kiddy.pl"; # Open up the pipe while ( $i++<10) { print SESAME "Testing IPC with pipes. Line $i.\n"; # Prin +t to pipe } close SESAME; # This (or the termination of the program) # closes the pipe. The other side recieves this # as an EOF (End OF File).

./Kiddy.pl:

#!/usr/bin/perl while ($in=<STDIN>) { # Read from <STDIN> until <EOF> chomp $in; # Remove <NL> print "By Kiddy.pl: $in\n"; # Print out what we read }

There are some extra fluff in Kiddy.pl, the use of chomp and $in instead of $_ f.ex., but I kept it there to make it more clear, at least to me.

If you run the above you would get this:

$ ./Daddy.pl
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 1.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 2.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 3.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 4.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 5.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 6.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 7.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 8.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 9.
By Kiddy.pl: Testing IPC with pipes. Line 10.
$

Note that Daddy.pl is not printing to the screen at all, Kiddy.pl is doing all that.