1fifo(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual fifo(7)
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6 fifo - first-in first-out special file, named pipe
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9 A FIFO special file (a named pipe) is similar to a pipe, except that it
10 is accessed as part of the filesystem. It can be opened by multiple
11 processes for reading or writing. When processes are exchanging data
12 via the FIFO, the kernel passes all data internally without writing it
13 to the filesystem. Thus, the FIFO special file has no contents on the
14 filesystem; the filesystem entry merely serves as a reference point so
15 that processes can access the pipe using a name in the filesystem.
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17 The kernel maintains exactly one pipe object for each FIFO special file
18 that is opened by at least one process. The FIFO must be opened on
19 both ends (reading and writing) before data can be passed. Normally,
20 opening the FIFO blocks until the other end is opened also.
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22 A process can open a FIFO in nonblocking mode. In this case, opening
23 for read-only succeeds even if no one has opened on the write side yet
24 and opening for write-only fails with ENXIO (no such device or address)
25 unless the other end has already been opened.
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27 Under Linux, opening a FIFO for read and write will succeed both in
28 blocking and nonblocking mode. POSIX leaves this behavior undefined.
29 This can be used to open a FIFO for writing while there are no readers
30 available. A process that uses both ends of the connection in order to
31 communicate with itself should be very careful to avoid deadlocks.
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34 For details of the semantics of I/O on FIFOs, see pipe(7).
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36 When a process tries to write to a FIFO that is not opened for read on
37 the other side, the process is sent a SIGPIPE signal.
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39 FIFO special files can be created by mkfifo(3), and are indicated by
40 ls -l with the file type 'p'.
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43 mkfifo(1), open(2), pipe(2), sigaction(2), signal(2), socketpair(2),
44 mkfifo(3), pipe(7)
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48Linux man-pages 6.04 2023-02-05 fifo(7)