Re: "here strings" and tmpfiles

[Chet Ramey]

On 4/9/19 12:19 AM, Robert Elz wrote:
>     Date:        Mon, 08 Apr 2019 17:04:41 -0700
>     From:        L A Walsh <bash@tlinx.org>
>     Message-ID:  <5CABE199.9030408@tlinx.org>
> 
>   | On 4/8/2019 7:10 AM, Chet Ramey wrote:
> 
>   | > Pipes are objectively not the same as files. They
>   | >
>   | > 1. Do not have file semantics. For instance, they are not seekable.
>   | >   
>   | In the case of an object that is only meant to be read from,
>   | I would argue, "that's fine".
> 
> For stdin (or stdout/stderr), processes in general should not assume that
> seek will ever work, as terminals aren't seekable, nor are pipes

This is true, and not the same thing as saying that such programs do not
exist. They have in the past, and I've heard about them in the context of
making them work. I hope they've all been consigned to the dustbin of history.


> It is a filename that connects to an underlying file descriptor.
> Or I assume that is how bash does it.

It's a filename that exposes a pipe. The pipe can be anonymous and use
/dev/fd or a FIFO.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/