NAME

       pipectl - a simple named pipe management utility

SYNOPSIS

       pipectl [-h,-o,-i,-n N,-p P,-f,-l]

DESCRIPTION

       pipectl  is  a  tool  to  create  and  manage short-lived named pipes that can be used to feed stdin to a
       longer-lived program from elsewhere in the system without needing a complex IPC mechanism  such  as  UNIX
       domain sockets.

       pipectl  is  intended  to  be  used  in  pairs, one call to pipectl opens the pipe (-o) and feeds it to a
       process, and all others with the same name or path will write to the stdin of that process:

           $ pipectl -o | daemon-process

           $ echo "do-the-thing --color red" | pipectl -i

           $ echo "quit" | pipectl -i

       The daemon process process will never observe an EOF on its  stdin.  pipectl  will  instead  block  until
       another  input  pipe  (-i)  is openend and will then feed the stdin of that process to the daemon process
       asynchronously.

       When the daemon process exits or closes its stdin, pipectl will clean up and  remove  the  created  named
       pipe automatically.

OPTIONS

       -h, --help
           Show help message and exit.

       -o, --out
           Create a named pipe and print its contents to stdout.

       -i, --in
           Write stdin to an open named pipe created with -o.

       -n N, --name N
           Create named pipe with a custom name. See PATHS.

       -p P, --path P
           Create a names pipe at a custom path. See PATHS.

       -f, --force
           Force overwrite an existing named pipe event if it already exists (only usable with -o).

       -l, --lock
           Use flock(2) to synchronize writes to the pipe (only usable with -i).

PATHS

       By  default,  pipectl  will  create  the  named  pipe in a temporary directory (TMP). The first available
       directory of these will be used:

       •   $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
       •   $TMPDIR
       •   /tmp

       The resulting path of the named pipe is as follows:

       default
           TMP/pipectl.UID.pipe

       with --name NAME
           TMP/pipectl.UID.NAME.pipe

       with --path PATH
           PATH

       where UID is the real user id of the pipectl process (see getuid(3)).

AUTHORS

       Maintained by Ferdinand Bachmann <ferdinand.bachmann@yrlf.at>. More information on pipectl can  be  found
       at <https://github.com/Ferdi265/pipectl>.

SEE ALSO

       pipectl(1) mkfifo(1) flock(2) getuid(3)

                                                   2025-03-01                                         pipectl(1)