How to send a simple string between two programs using pipes?

A regular pipe can only connect two related processes. It is created by a process and will vanish when the last process closes it.

A named pipe, also called a FIFO for its behavior, can be used to connect two unrelated processes and exists independently of the processes; meaning it can exist even if no one is using it. A FIFO is created using the mkfifo() library function.

Example

writer.c

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main()
{
    int fd;
    char * myfifo = "/tmp/myfifo";

    /* create the FIFO (named pipe) */
    mkfifo(myfifo, 0666);

    /* write "Hi" to the FIFO */
    fd = open(myfifo, O_WRONLY);
    write(fd, "Hi", sizeof("Hi"));
    close(fd);

    /* remove the FIFO */
    unlink(myfifo);

    return 0;
}

reader.c

#include <fcntl.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <unistd.h>

#define MAX_BUF 1024

int main()
{
    int fd;
    char * myfifo = "/tmp/myfifo";
    char buf[MAX_BUF];

    /* open, read, and display the message from the FIFO */
    fd = open(myfifo, O_RDONLY);
    read(fd, buf, MAX_BUF);
    printf("Received: %s\n", buf);
    close(fd);

    return 0;
}

_{Note: Error checking was omitted from the above code for simplicity.}

From Creating Pipes in C, this shows you how to fork a program to use a pipe. If you don't want to fork(), you can use named pipes.

In addition, you can get the effect of prog1 | prog2 by sending output of prog1 to stdout and reading from stdin in prog2. You can also read stdin by opening a file named /dev/stdin (but not sure of the portability of that).

/*****************************************************************************
 Excerpt from "Linux Programmer's Guide - Chapter 6"
 (C)opyright 1994-1995, Scott Burkett
 ***************************************************************************** 
 MODULE: pipe.c
 *****************************************************************************/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>

int main(void)
{
        int     fd[2], nbytes;
        pid_t   childpid;
        char    string[] = "Hello, world!\n";
        char    readbuffer[80];

        pipe(fd);

        if((childpid = fork()) == -1)
        {
                perror("fork");
                exit(1);
        }

        if(childpid == 0)
        {
                /* Child process closes up input side of pipe */
                close(fd[0]);

                /* Send "string" through the output side of pipe */
                write(fd[1], string, (strlen(string)+1));
                exit(0);
        }
        else
        {
                /* Parent process closes up output side of pipe */
                close(fd[1]);

                /* Read in a string from the pipe */
                nbytes = read(fd[0], readbuffer, sizeof(readbuffer));
                printf("Received string: %s", readbuffer);
        }

        return(0);
}

dup2( STDIN_FILENO, newfd )

And read:

char reading[ 1025 ];
int fdin = 0, r_control;
if( dup2( STDIN_FILENO, fdin ) < 0 ){
    perror( "dup2(  )" );
    exit( errno );
}
memset( reading, '\0', 1025 );
while( ( r_control = read( fdin, reading, 1024 ) ) > 0 ){
    printf( "<%s>", reading );
    memset( reading, '\0', 1025 );
}
if( r_control < 0 )
    perror( "read(  )" );    
close( fdin );    

But, I think that fcntl can be a better solution

echo "salut" | code