Quoth Malcolm Beattie on Thu, May 27, 1999:
> Vadim Vygonets writes:
> > When C
> > dies, the pipe is closed, and Q will get an EOF on it. So when Q
> > has nothing to do, it can select(2) on the pipe.
>
> That's the solution I came up with and I'd call it "elegant"
> rather than "dirty" :-) The O/S keeps track of the reference
> counting for you however many processes you fire off (or a
> process can close the descriptor if it doesn't want to participate
> provided you pass it the descriptor number).
Yup, the write end of the pipe can be held by more than one
process.
> Another way would be via a SysV semaphore.
But will it work on SunOS, HP-UX, AIX, and other such beasts?
> I'd consider the pipe one better: more flexible,
True.
> easier to implement
True.
> and more Unixy.
Umm, I don't know whether it's more UNIXy or not... Anyway, it
should work.
Vadik.
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