Re: Really odd behavior of overlapping named pipes?

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Followup to:  <20020126021610.YKAU20810.femail29.sdc1.sfba.home.com@there>
By author:    Rob Landley <landley@trommello.org>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> You apparently can't share named pipe instances.  They short-circuit.  When I 
> open four command shells, do a mkfifo /tmp/fifo, and then do the following:
> 
> Shell one and two:
> 
> cat /tmp/mkfifo
> 
> Shell three and four:
> 
> cat > /tmp/mkfifo
> 
> Both of the write windows go into the FIRST read window.  The second read 
> window continues to block on the open, getting nothing.
> 

A pipe is *one* communications channel.

A socket is *a communications channel creator*.

It sounds like what you're expecting is what would happen if we
allowed open() on a Unix domain socket to do the obvious thing (can
we, pretty please?)

	-hpa
-- 
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