worley@compass.com (Dale Worley) (07/17/90)
The secret to opening pipes is to use the pipe() function, added in patch 9. Unfortunately, the ASCIIized copy of the man page that I grepped for 'pipe' is pre-patch 9, so I didn't see pipe(). For others who might find it useful: pipe(READHANDLE,WRITEHANDLE) Opens a pair of connected pipes like the corresponding system call. Note that if you set up a loop of piped processes, deadlock can occur unless you are very careful. In addition, note that perl's pipes use stdio buffering, so you may need to set $| to flush your WRITEHANDLE after each command, depending on the application. [Requires version 3.0 patchlevel 9.] Dale Worley Compass, Inc. worley@compass.com -- LA, truth to tell, is not much different from a pretty girl with the clap.