Writing A Program To Mimic Linux Piping

[Ziggy54354]

I've been trying to write a program that replicates how you would type in a series of commands that pipe into one another in linux. I've gotten the program to work with just 2 commands but when i try 3 or more, it does not output anything. If anyone can provide any help with this, that would be great. This is what i've written so far and is very much just for testing... but if I can get this to work then i can probably write the whole program.

 

 

# include <stdio.h>
# include <stdlib.h>
# include <unistd.h>
# include <sys/types.h>
# include <sys/stat.h>
# include <sys/wait.h>
# include <fcntl.h>
# include <string.h>
# include <ctype.h>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
int main()
{

pid_t child = 0;
int rotate = 0;
int pipe1[2];
int pipe2[2];
pipe(pipe1);
char string[1000];

/*
char *arg1[] = { "cat", "text.txt", (char *) 0 };
char *arg2[] = { "sort", (char *) 0 };
char *arg3[] = { "uniq", (char *) 0 };
*/

char *arg1[] = { "ls", (char *) 0 };
char *arg2[] = { "sort", (char *) 0 };
char *arg3[] = { "grep", "test", (char *) 0 };
/*	
char *arg1[] = { "echo", "hi buddy", (char *) 0 };
char *arg2[] = { "grep", "hi", (char *) 0 };
//char *arg3[] = { "grep", "hi", (char *) 0 };
*/
int numcommands = 3;
for(int i = 0; i < numcommands; i++){

child = fork();

	if (child == 0)
	{
	//cout << "I am child " << i << " " << rotate << endl;

		if (i == 0 or i == numcommands -1){ //first or last
			if (i == 0){ //only needs input

				//cout << "this should happen first" << endl;
				dup2(pipe1[0], 0); // read end of pipe and stdin
				close(pipe1[1]);

			}
			if (i == numcommands - 1 and rotate == 0){ //does not need input but needs to put something something out

				//cout << "this should happen last" << endl;
				dup2(pipe2[1], 1); // write end of pipe1 and stdout
				close(pipe2[0]);

			}

			if (i == numcommands - 1 and rotate == 1){ //does not need input but needs to put something something out

				//cout << "this should happen last" << endl;
				dup2(pipe1[1], 1); // write end of pipe1 and stdout
				close(pipe1[0]);

			}
		}
		else {
			if (rotate == 1){

				cout << "this should happen 2nd" << endl;

				dup2(pipe1[1], 1); // write end of pipe1 and stdout
				close(pipe1[0]);

				sleep(1);

				//read(pipe2[0], string, 1000);
				cout << "testing" << endl;					

				dup2(pipe2[0], 0); // read end of pipe2 and stdin
				close(pipe2[1]);					


			}
			else{

				//cout << "this should also not happen" << endl;
				dup2(pipe1[0], 0); // read end of pipe2  and stdin
				close(pipe1[1]);

				dup2(pipe2[1], 1); // write end of pipe1 and stdout
				close(pipe2[0]);	

			}
		}			

		//cout << "about to execute "<< i << endl;
		sleep(1);
		//this is a test			

		if( i == 0 ) {
			execvp (arg3[0], arg3); 
		}
		if (i == 1 ) {
			execvp (arg2[0], arg2); 
		}
		if (i == 2 ) {
			execvp (arg1[0], arg1); 
		}
	}
	else
	{	
		pipe(pipe2);			
		if (rotate == 0) {
		rotate = 1;
		}
		else {
		rotate = 0;
			}
		//cout << "I am parent" << endl;
		sleep(1);
	}
}

return 0;

}

Edited September 28, 2008 by Ziggy54354