While reading the cookbook, I started playing with the forking open. I have a small program (below) that forks 3 processes, each of which modify STDIN and send to STDOUT. What I don't understand is why they work in the order that they do.
tee('foo'); tee('bar'); tee('baz'); while (<>) { print } sub tee { my $key = shift; # reopen STDOUT in parent and return return if my $pid = open(STDOUT, "|-"); die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined $pid; $|++; # process STDIN in child while (<STDIN>) { print "$key: $_" or die "tee output failed: $!"; } print "$$ exiting...\n"; exit; # don't let the child return to main! }
When the first child is forked, the STDOUT of the parent is connected to the STDIN of the child, like so:
Parent -> Child1
For the second and third forks I would expect the new child to be inserted between the parent and current child, so that after 3 forks:
Parent -> Child3 -> Child2 - Child1
So I would expected each line of output to be preprended with:
baz: bar: foo:
Instead, each line of output is prepended with:
foo: bar: baz: 
What is the error in my reasoning? How does this actually work? Thanks.

In reply to Understanding forking open by Anonymous Monk

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