Question

I have successfully piped the output of one command into the input of another and then show the output of the second command to the screen.

I want to do this with three successive commands. (actually eventually I want to do it with N commands passed into the program at run time.

This is my attempt at pipelining three commands together.

UPDATED: i updated my question to reflect my latest try.

    #include <string.h>
    #include <fstream>
    #include <iostream>
    #include <unistd.h>
    #include <stdio.h>
    #include <sys/wait.h>
    #include <sys/types.h>
    using namespace std;

    int main(int argc, char * argv[])
    {
             pid_t pid;
        int pfd[2];
        char* prgname = NULL;
        if(pipe(pfd) == -1)
        {
                perror("error on pipe call");
                return(1);
        }
        for(int j = 0;j<numberOfCommands;j++)
        {
                cout<<commands[j]<<"_"<<endl;
        }
        pid = fork();
        if(pid == 0){//child process
                close(pfd[0]); //close read end of pipe
                dup2(pfd[1],1);//connect the pipes
                close(pfd[1]);//close extra file descriptors
                prgname = (char*)"dmesg"; //commands[0];//first command
                execlp(prgname, prgname, 0);//Load the program
        }
        else
        {
                int pfd2[2];
                if(pipe(pfd2) == -1)
                {
                        perror("error on pipe call 2");
                        return(1);
                }
                pid = fork();
                if(pid == 0)//child
                {
                        close(pfd[1]);
                        dup2(pfd[0],0);
                        close(pfd[0]);
                        close(pfd2[0]);
                        dup2(pfd2[1],1);
                        close(pfd2[1]);
                        prgname = (char*)"sort";
                        execlp(prgname,prgname,0);
                }
                else
                {
                close(pfd2[1]); //close the write end of the pipe
                dup2(pfd2[0],0);//connect the pipes
                close(pfd2[0]); //close extra file descriptor
                prgname = (char*)"more"; //commands[1];//now run the second command
                execlp(prgname, prgname, 0);//Load the program
                }
        }
        return 0;
}

i have hard coded all values for simplicity.
The program displays what should be the output of “dmesg|more” but does not do the sort part and then freezes. I see the begging of dmesg and more in the bottom left but i can not view any more.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

pipe(2) only provides 2 file descriptors for 1 pipe. The 3rd file descriptor (pfd[2]) is junk and is never getting initialized. If you want to create a pipeline with 3 commands in it, you need to call pipe() twice to get two pipes: one for connecting the first and second processes, and one for connecting the second and third processes.