I’m trying to code a script for replacing an application which takes
it’s input from file descriptors 0 (stdin) and 1 (stdout). It must also
be able to open another application which in turn also reads from the
above mentioned file descriptors.
I’ve managed to take stdin and put it into stdin of the second app,
though couldn’t find the way of opening stdout for reading.
I’m trying to code a script for replacing an application which takes
it’s input from file descriptors 0 (stdin) and 1 (stdout).
This is not possible. You can only read from stdin and not stdout.
It must also
be able to open another application which in turn also reads from the
above mentioned file descriptors.
This is not clear to me: does the other app read from the same fd’s
(i.e. reading continues in the sub process) or do you want to connect
them via a pipe? (The latter is done with IO.popen() or Kernel open as
you discovered already).
I’ve managed to take stdin and put it into stdin of the second app,
though couldn’t find the way of opening stdout for reading.
I’m trying to code a script for replacing an application which takes
it’s input from file descriptors 0 (stdin) and 1 (stdout).
This is not possible. You can only read from stdin and not stdout.
(snif)
It must also
be able to open another application which in turn also reads from the
above mentioned file descriptors.
This is not clear to me: does the other app read from the same fd’s
(i.e. reading continues in the sub process) or do you want to connect
them via a pipe? (The latter is done with IO.popen() or Kernel open as
you discovered already).
I’ve managed to take stdin and put it into stdin of the second app,
though couldn’t find the way of opening stdout for reading.
Does anybody have a clue about this? I’m not very skilled in Ruby, so
any help will be very appreciated.
What exactly is your problem? Did you try it and it did not work?
Here’s a simply sample that works for me
I’ll tell you exactly what am I trying to do. I have qmail and I want to
replace qmail-queue
(http://www.qmail.org/qmail-manual-html/man8/qmail-queue.html) with my
ruby script in order to make some mangling of the email, and then call
qmail-queue to let the email go on.
You might argue that if someone provides a file on fd 1 it isn’t really
stdout, but you can certainly open fd 1 (or any fd) both for reading or
writing if whatever is attached to them supports the mode you want - fd
0, 1 and 2 aren’t special in any way to the OS.
You can test the above like this:
ruby in.rb 1<bar.txt 0<foo.txt
The 1<filename and 0<filename opens the files for input at the file
descriptors specified.
anyway):
You can test the above like this:
ruby in.rb 1<bar.txt 0<foo.txt
The 1<filename and 0<filename opens the files for input at the file
descriptors specified.
Thanks for elaborating! Actually I was not aware that you can do this.
However, even if it is possible I would not do it as the general
convention is that 1 should be written to and 0 be read from only.
After all, what do you gain by reading from FD 1 if nothing writes to
it?
But, as we have seen, the issue at hand was about connecting parent and
child process through pipes.
You might argue that if someone provides a file on fd 1 it isn’t really
stdout, but you can certainly open fd 1 (or any fd) both for reading or
writing if whatever is attached to them supports the mode you want - fd
0, 1 and 2 aren’t special in any way to the OS.
You can test the above like this:
ruby in.rb 1<bar.txt 0<foo.txt
The 1<filename and 0<filename opens the files for input at the file
descriptors specified.
Vidar
Thanks, Vidar! You solved half my problem. Now all I’d need to know is
how to write on fd 1 of a process spawned from ruby with IO.popen.
I tried the following without success:
f = open("|-", “w+”)
if f == nil
puts “This is Child”
r_fd1 = IO.for_fd(1,“r+”)
STDERR.puts “FROM STDOUT (fd 1): #{r_fd1.read}”
STDERR.puts “Hijo: #{STDIN.gets}”
exit 69
else
STDERR.puts “Running parent.”
f.puts “From parent\n”
STDERR.puts “Got: #{f.gets}”
STDIN.puts “To fd 1 of the child.”
pid = Process.wait
STDERR.puts “Child terminated, pid = #{pid}, exit code = #{$? >>
8}”
end
If I commmented the lines with “readable_fd1”, this piece of code would
run. What I get is:
fork.rb:4:in for_fd': Invalid argument (Errno::EINVAL) from fork.rb:4 Running parent. fork.rb:10:inwrite’: Broken pipe (Errno::EPIPE)
from fork.rb:10
Thanks for elaborating! Actually I was not aware that you can do this.
However, even if it is possible I would not do it as the general
convention is that 1 should be written to and 0 be read from only.
I’d restrict that to say that the convention is to do this if your app
is meant to be executed from a shell or shell script. When you’re
writing code meant to plug into another application, all bets are off.
Particularly with Qmail as Antonio was looking to do - Qmail has some
very weird conventions and most of the different pieces talk to each
other via different set of predefined file descriptors and you don’t
really have any choice.
Vidar
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