Python program using os.pipe and os.fork() issue

Question

I\'ve recently needed to write a script that performs an os.fork() to split into two processes. The child process becomes a server process and passes data b

Answer 1

Are you using read() without specifying a size, or treating the pipe as an iterator (for line in f)? If so, that's probably the source of your problem - read() is defined to read until the end of the file before returning, rather than just read what is available for reading. That will mean it will block until the child calls close().

In the example code linked to, this is OK - the parent is acting in a blocking manner, and just using the child for isolation purposes. If you want to continue, then either use non-blocking IO as in the code you posted (but be prepared to deal with half-complete data), or read in chunks (eg r.read(size) or r.readline()) which will block only until a specific size / line has been read. (you'll still need to call flush on the child)

It looks like treating the pipe as an iterator is using some further buffer as well, for "for line in r:" may not give you what you want if you need each line to be immediately consumed. It may be possible to disable this, but just specifying 0 for the buffer size in fdopen doesn't seem sufficient.

Heres some sample code that should work:

import os, sys, time

r,w=os.pipe()
r,w=os.fdopen(r,'r',0), os.fdopen(w,'w',0)

pid = os.fork()
if pid:          # Parent
    w.close()
    while 1:
        data=r.readline()
        if not data: break
        print "parent read: " + data.strip()
else:           # Child
    r.close()
    for i in range(10):
        print >>w, "line %s" % i
        w.flush()
        time.sleep(1)