simple yet tricky pipe question

rastadevil · 03-23-2006, 05:20 PM

Hi all..
Directly, is it possible to create a random number of pipes? This question arises because everytime i or someone creates a pipe, first declares a 2 state array and then do the pipe() call like:
fd[2];

..

pipe(fd);

For me it would be great to create a random number of pipes, but since we first have to declare a prefixed number of "state arrays" like the one fd[2] above i wonder if my question is possible!?

Thank you, hope further answers help other users as well.

SaintsOfTheDiamond · 03-23-2006, 05:57 PM

I'm not sure if this is possible, but could you create a vector of two element int arrays (to use as the file handles) which you can make a random size, then just iterate through the vector creating new pipes along the way? There'd end up being quite a bit of bookkeeping overhead to access an individual file handle that way though.

primo · 03-23-2006, 09:02 PM

You could declare a global fd_set variable and initialize it with FD_CLR(). See select(2). Then you go on adding file descriptors with FD_SET() and test which one of them is set with FD_ISSET()