26.12 Pipe Interface (Unix only)

The Pipe interface establishes a pipe as a PSL channel from which (or to which) normal PSL read/write operations can be used. Pipes are specially useful to supply data to other processes, e.g. REDUCE uses it to send data to a plot program.

(pipe!-open S:string M:Mode): integer expr

• Starts a process and executes the command in ¡string¿. The mode must be either Input or Output. Returns a channel.

Pipes are closed with a normal close call. This will kill the process that has been started. If this process should survive, you have to use abandonpipe.

(abandonpipe channel): void expr

• Closes channel without killing the process started by pipe!-open. Returns nil.

Example: