Pipeline system with string - c

Question

I am working on pipeline system with string in C. For example I write this line to console ./pipeline LOWERCASE REVWORD SQUASHWS < stringFile.txt. It should be any like this P0 -> P1 -> P2 -> ...-> Pn. P0 load string from file stringFile.txt and send it to P1.. I can work with pipe(send and read), but I dont know how to work with N processes. It should be any like this. Can you give me any advice or example? Thank you
while(is_something_to_read) {
load_from_previous_process();
do_process(); // for example LOWERCASE
send_to_next_process();
}

Answer 1

Patrik,
I wrote a program that simulate a shell that will spawn a given amount of children and each process will then communicate with another process. Since the number of processes can vary I decided to use a 2D array for the pipes. In the below code NUM_PROCS refers to the amount of processes that will be running (including the parent).
I declare it
int pipes[NUM_PROCS][2];
After this, I create the pipes
for(i = 0; i < NUM_PROCS; i++)
{
if((pipe(pipes[i])) < 0)
{
perror("Failed to open pipe");
}
}
This is a shell program that i wrote for practise.
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#define MAXARGS 256
char ** getargs(char * cmd) {
char** argsarray;
int nargs = 0;
int nlen = strlen(cmd);
int i = 0;
argsarray = (char**) malloc(sizeof(char*) * MAXARGS);
argsarray[0] = strtok(cmd," ");
i = 0;
while (argsarray[i] != NULL){
i++;
argsarray[i] = strtok(NULL," ");
}
return argsarray;
}
int main(void){
pid_t childpid;
int fd[256][2];
char cmd[256];
char * sepCmd[256];
char * pch;
printf("Please enter a command sequence: \n");
gets(cmd);
printf("You have entered: %s ....%d\n", cmd,strlen(cmd));
printf("Attempting to split up command: \n");
pch = strtok (cmd, "|");
int count = 0;
while (pch != NULL && count < 256) {
printf("%s\n", pch);
sepCmd[count] = pch;
printf("The value in this array value is: %s\n", sepCmd[count]);
pch = strtok (NULL, "|");
count++;
}
char ** argue;
int k;
/* Block that deals with the first command given by the user */
k = 0;
pipe(fd[k]);
if(!fork()) {
dup2(fd[k][1], STDOUT_FILENO);
close(fd[k][0]);
argue = getargs(sepCmd[k]);
execvp(argue[0], argue);
perror(argue[0]);
exit(0);
}
/*Loop that will control all other comands except the last*/
for(k = 1; k <= count - 2; k++) {
close(fd[k-1][1]);
pipe(fd[k]);
if(!fork()) {
close(fd[k][0]);
dup2(fd[k-1][0], STDIN_FILENO);
dup2(fd[k][1], STDOUT_FILENO);
argue = getargs(sepCmd[k]);
execvp(argue[0], argue);
perror(argue[0]);
exit(0);
}
}
/*Block that will take care of the last command in the sequence*/
k = count - 1;
close(fd[k-1][1]);
if(!fork()) {
dup2(fd[k-1][0], STDIN_FILENO);
argue = getargs(sepCmd[k]);
execvp(argue[0], argue);
perror(argue[0]);
exit(0);
}
while(waitpid(-1, NULL, 0) != -1);
}