PERLIPC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLIPC(1) #
PERLIPC(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide PERLIPC(1)
NNAAMMEE #
perlipc - Perl interprocess communication (signals, fifos, pipes, safe
subprocesses, sockets, and semaphores)
DDEESSCCRRIIPPTTIIOONN #
The basic IPC facilities of Perl are built out of the good old Unix
signals, named pipes, pipe opens, the Berkeley socket routines, and SysV
IPC calls. Each is used in slightly different situations.
SSiiggnnaallss Perl uses a simple signal handling model: the %SIG hash contains names or references of user-installed signal handlers. These handlers will be called with an argument which is the name of the signal that triggered it. A signal may be generated intentionally from a particular keyboard sequence like control-C or control-Z, sent to you from another process, or triggered automatically by the kernel when special events transpire, like a child process exiting, your own process running out of stack space, or hitting a process file-size limit.
For example, to trap an interrupt signal, set up a handler like this:
our $shucks;
sub catch_zap {
my $signame = shift;
$shucks++;
die "Somebody sent me a SIG$signame";
}
$SIG{INT} = __PACKAGE__ . "::catch_zap";
$SIG{INT} = \&catch_zap; # best strategy
Prior to Perl 5.8.0 it was necessary to do as little as you possibly
could in your handler; notice how all we do is set a global variable and
then raise an exception. That's because on most systems, libraries are
not re-entrant; particularly, memory allocation and I/O routines are not.
That meant that doing nearly _a_n_y_t_h_i_n_g in your handler could in theory
trigger a memory fault and subsequent core dump - see "Deferred Signals
(Safe Signals)" below.
The names of the signals are the ones listed out by "kill -l" on your
system, or you can retrieve them using the CPAN module IPC::Signal.
You may also choose to assign the strings "IGNORE" or "DEFAULT" as the
handler, in which case Perl will try to discard the signal or do the
default thing.
On most Unix platforms, the "CHLD" (sometimes also known as "CLD") signal
has special behavior with respect to a value of "IGNORE". Setting
$SIG{CHLD} to "IGNORE" on such a platform has the effect of not creating
zombie processes when the parent process fails to "wait()" on its child
processes (i.e., child processes are automatically reaped). Calling
"wait()" with $SIG{CHLD} set to "IGNORE" usually returns "-1" on such
platforms.
Some signals can be neither trapped nor ignored, such as the KILL and
STOP (but not the TSTP) signals. Note that ignoring signals makes them
disappear. If you only want them blocked temporarily without them
getting lost you'll have to use the "POSIX" module's sigprocmask.
Sending a signal to a negative process ID means that you send the signal
to the entire Unix process group. This code sends a hang-up signal to
all processes in the current process group, and also sets $SIG{HUP} to
"IGNORE" so it doesn't kill itself:
# block scope for local
{
local $SIG{HUP} = "IGNORE";
kill HUP => -getpgrp();
# snazzy writing of: kill("HUP", -getpgrp())
}
Another interesting signal to send is signal number zero. This doesn't
actually affect a child process, but instead checks whether it's alive or
has changed its UIDs.
unless (kill 0 => $kid_pid) {
warn "something wicked happened to $kid_pid";
}
Signal number zero may fail because you lack permission to send the
signal when directed at a process whose real or saved UID is not
identical to the real or effective UID of the sending process, even
though the process is alive. You may be able to determine the cause of
failure using $! or "%!".
unless (kill(0 => $pid) || $!{EPERM}) {
warn "$pid looks dead";
}
You might also want to employ anonymous functions for simple signal
handlers:
$SIG{INT} = sub { die "\nOutta here!\n" };
SIGCHLD handlers require some special care. If a second child dies while
in the signal handler caused by the first death, we won't get another
signal. So must loop here else we will leave the unreaped child as a
zombie. And the next time two children die we get another zombie. And so
on.
use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";
$SIG{CHLD} = sub {
while ((my $child = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0) {
$Kid_Status{$child} = $?;
}
};
# do something that forks...
Be careful: qqxx(()), ssyysstteemm(()), and some modules for calling external
commands do a ffoorrkk(()), then wwaaiitt(()) for the result. Thus, your signal
handler will be called. Because wwaaiitt(()) was already called by ssyysstteemm(()) or
qqxx(()), the wwaaiitt(()) in the signal handler will see no more zombies and will
therefore block.
The best way to prevent this issue is to use wwaaiittppiidd(()), as in the
following example:
use POSIX ":sys_wait_h"; # for nonblocking read
my %children;
$SIG{CHLD} = sub {
# don't change $! and $? outside handler
local ($!, $?);
while ( (my $pid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0 ) {
delete $children{$pid};
cleanup_child($pid, $?);
}
};
while (1) {
my $pid = fork();
die "cannot fork" unless defined $pid;
if ($pid == 0) {
# ...
exit 0;
} else {
$children{$pid}=1;
# ...
system($command);
# ...
}
}
Signal handling is also used for timeouts in Unix. While safely
protected within an "eval{}" block, you set a signal handler to trap
alarm signals and then schedule to have one delivered to you in some
number of seconds. Then try your blocking operation, clearing the alarm
when it's done but not before you've exited your "eval{}" block. If it
goes off, you'll use ddiiee(()) to jump out of the block.
Here's an example:
my $ALARM_EXCEPTION = "alarm clock restart";
eval {
local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die $ALARM_EXCEPTION };
alarm 10;
flock($fh, 2) # blocking write lock
|| die "cannot flock: $!";
alarm 0;
};
if ($@ && $@ !~ quotemeta($ALARM_EXCEPTION)) { die }
If the operation being timed out is ssyysstteemm(()) or qqxx(()), this technique is
liable to generate zombies. If this matters to you, you'll need to do
your own ffoorrkk(()) and eexxeecc(()), and kill the errant child process.
For more complex signal handling, you might see the standard POSIX
module. Lamentably, this is almost entirely undocumented, but the
_e_x_t_/_P_O_S_I_X_/_t_/_s_i_g_a_c_t_i_o_n_._t file from the Perl source distribution has some
examples in it.
HHaannddlliinngg tthhee SSIIGGHHUUPP SSiiggnnaall iinn DDaaeemmoonnss A process that usually starts when the system boots and shuts down when the system is shut down is called a daemon (Disk And Execution MONitor). If a daemon process has a configuration file which is modified after the process has been started, there should be a way to tell that process to reread its configuration file without stopping the process. Many daemons provide this mechanism using a “SIGHUP” signal handler. When you want to tell the daemon to reread the file, simply send it the “SIGHUP” signal.
The following example implements a simple daemon, which restarts itself
every time the "SIGHUP" signal is received. The actual code is located in
the subroutine "code()", which just prints some debugging info to show
that it works; it should be replaced with the real code.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use POSIX ();
use FindBin ();
use File::Basename ();
use File::Spec::Functions qw(catfile);
$| = 1;
# make the daemon cross-platform, so exec always calls the script
# itself with the right path, no matter how the script was invoked.
my $script = File::Basename::basename($0);
my $SELF = catfile($FindBin::Bin, $script);
# POSIX unmasks the sigprocmask properly
$SIG{HUP} = sub {
print "got SIGHUP\n";
exec($SELF, @ARGV) || die "$0: couldn't restart: $!";
};
code();
sub code {
print "PID: $$\n";
print "ARGV: @ARGV\n";
my $count = 0;
while (1) {
sleep 2;
print ++$count, "\n";
}
}
DDeeffeerrrreedd SSiiggnnaallss ((SSaaffee SSiiggnnaallss)) Before Perl 5.8.0, installing Perl code to deal with signals exposed you to danger from two things. First, few system library functions are re- entrant. If the signal interrupts while Perl is executing one function (like mmaalllloocc(3) or pprriinnttff(3)), and your signal handler then calls the same function again, you could get unpredictable behavior–often, a core dump. Second, Perl isn’t itself re-entrant at the lowest levels. If the signal interrupts Perl while Perl is changing its own internal data structures, similarly unpredictable behavior may result.
There were two things you could do, knowing this: be paranoid or be
pragmatic. The paranoid approach was to do as little as possible in your
signal handler. Set an existing integer variable that already has a
value, and return. This doesn't help you if you're in a slow system
call, which will just restart. That means you have to "die" to
lloonnggjjmmpp(3) out of the handler. Even this is a little cavalier for the
true paranoiac, who avoids "die" in a handler because the system _i_s out
to get you. The pragmatic approach was to say "I know the risks, but
prefer the convenience", and to do anything you wanted in your signal
handler, and be prepared to clean up core dumps now and again.
Perl 5.8.0 and later avoid these problems by "deferring" signals. That
is, when the signal is delivered to the process by the system (to the C
code that implements Perl) a flag is set, and the handler returns
immediately. Then at strategic "safe" points in the Perl interpreter
(e.g. when it is about to execute a new opcode) the flags are checked and
the Perl level handler from %SIG is executed. The "deferred" scheme
allows much more flexibility in the coding of signal handlers as we know
the Perl interpreter is in a safe state, and that we are not in a system
library function when the handler is called. However the implementation
does differ from previous Perls in the following ways:
Long-running opcodes
As the Perl interpreter looks at signal flags only when it is about
to execute a new opcode, a signal that arrives during a long-running
opcode (e.g. a regular expression operation on a very large string)
will not be seen until the current opcode completes.
If a signal of any given type fires multiple times during an opcode
(such as from a fine-grained timer), the handler for that signal will
be called only once, after the opcode completes; all other instances
will be discarded. Furthermore, if your system's signal queue gets
flooded to the point that there are signals that have been raised but
not yet caught (and thus not deferred) at the time an opcode
completes, those signals may well be caught and deferred during
subsequent opcodes, with sometimes surprising results. For example,
you may see alarms delivered even after calling alarm(0) as the
latter stops the raising of alarms but does not cancel the delivery
of alarms raised but not yet caught. Do not depend on the behaviors
described in this paragraph as they are side effects of the current
implementation and may change in future versions of Perl.
Interrupting IO
When a signal is delivered (e.g., SIGINT from a control-C) the
operating system breaks into IO operations like _r_e_a_d(2), which is
used to implement Perl's rreeaaddlliinnee(()) function, the "<>" operator. On
older Perls the handler was called immediately (and as "read" is not
"unsafe", this worked well). With the "deferred" scheme the handler
is _n_o_t called immediately, and if Perl is using the system's "stdio"
library that library may restart the "read" without returning to Perl
to give it a chance to call the %SIG handler. If this happens on your
system the solution is to use the ":perlio" layer to do IO--at least
on those handles that you want to be able to break into with signals.
(The ":perlio" layer checks the signal flags and calls %SIG handlers
before resuming IO operation.)
The default in Perl 5.8.0 and later is to automatically use the
":perlio" layer.
Note that it is not advisable to access a file handle within a signal
handler where that signal has interrupted an I/O operation on that
same handle. While perl will at least try hard not to crash, there
are no guarantees of data integrity; for example, some data might get
dropped or written twice.
Some networking library functions like ggeetthhoossttbbyynnaammee(()) are known to
have their own implementations of timeouts which may conflict with
your timeouts. If you have problems with such functions, try using
the POSIX ssiiggaaccttiioonn(()) function, which bypasses Perl safe signals. Be
warned that this does subject you to possible memory corruption, as
described above.
Instead of setting $SIG{ALRM}:
local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm" };
try something like the following:
use POSIX qw(SIGALRM);
POSIX::sigaction(SIGALRM,
POSIX::SigAction->new(sub { die "alarm" }))
|| die "Error setting SIGALRM handler: $!\n";
Another way to disable the safe signal behavior locally is to use the
"Perl::Unsafe::Signals" module from CPAN, which affects all signals.
Restartable system calls
On systems that supported it, older versions of Perl used the
SA_RESTART flag when installing %SIG handlers. This meant that
restartable system calls would continue rather than returning when a
signal arrived. In order to deliver deferred signals promptly, Perl
5.8.0 and later do _n_o_t use SA_RESTART. Consequently, restartable
system calls can fail (with $! set to "EINTR") in places where they
previously would have succeeded.
The default ":perlio" layer retries "read", "write" and "close" as
described above; interrupted "wait" and "waitpid" calls will always
be retried.
Signals as "faults"
Certain signals like SEGV, ILL, BUS and FPE are generated by virtual
memory addressing errors and similar "faults". These are normally
fatal: there is little a Perl-level handler can do with them. So
Perl delivers them immediately rather than attempting to defer them.
It is possible to catch these with a %SIG handler (see perlvar), but
on top of the usual problems of "unsafe" signals the signal is likely
to get rethrown immediately on return from the signal handler, so
such a handler should "die" or "exit" instead.
Signals triggered by operating system state
On some operating systems certain signal handlers are supposed to "do
something" before returning. One example can be CHLD or CLD, which
indicates a child process has completed. On some operating systems
the signal handler is expected to "wait" for the completed child
process. On such systems the deferred signal scheme will not work for
those signals: it does not do the "wait". Again the failure will look
like a loop as the operating system will reissue the signal because
there are completed child processes that have not yet been "wait"ed
for.
If you want the old signal behavior back despite possible memory
corruption, set the environment variable "PERL_SIGNALS" to "unsafe".
This feature first appeared in Perl 5.8.1.
NNaammeedd PPiippeess A named pipe (often referred to as a FIFO) is an old Unix IPC mechanism for processes communicating on the same machine. It works just like regular anonymous pipes, except that the processes rendezvous using a filename and need not be related.
To create a named pipe, use the "POSIX::mkfifo()" function.
use POSIX qw(mkfifo);
mkfifo($path, 0700) || die "mkfifo $path failed: $!";
You can also use the Unix command mmkknnoodd(1), or on some systems,
mmkkffiiffoo(1). These may not be in your normal path, though.
# system return val is backwards, so && not ||
#
$ENV{PATH} .= ":/etc:/usr/etc";
if ( system("mknod", $path, "p")
&& system("mkfifo", $path) )
{
die "mk{nod,fifo} $path failed";
}
A fifo is convenient when you want to connect a process to an unrelated
one. When you open a fifo, the program will block until there's
something on the other end.
For example, let's say you'd like to have your _._s_i_g_n_a_t_u_r_e file be a named
pipe that has a Perl program on the other end. Now every time any
program (like a mailer, news reader, finger program, etc.) tries to read
from that file, the reading program will read the new signature from your
program. We'll use the pipe-checking file-test operator, --pp, to find out
whether anyone (or anything) has accidentally removed our fifo.
chdir(); # go home
my $FIFO = ".signature";
while (1) {
unless (-p $FIFO) {
unlink $FIFO; # discard any failure, will catch later
require POSIX; # delayed loading of heavy module
POSIX::mkfifo($FIFO, 0700)
|| die "can't mkfifo $FIFO: $!";
}
# next line blocks till there's a reader
open (my $fh, ">", $FIFO) || die "can't open $FIFO: $!";
print $fh "John Smith (smith\@host.org)\n", `fortune -s`;
close($fh) || die "can't close $FIFO: $!";
sleep 2; # to avoid dup signals
}
UUssiinngg ooppeenn(()) ffoorr IIPPCC Perl’s basic ooppeenn(()) statement can also be used for unidirectional interprocess communication by specifying the open mode as “|-” or “-|”. Here’s how to start something up in a child process you intend to write to:
open(my $spooler, "|-", "cat -v | lpr -h 2>/dev/null")
|| die "can't fork: $!";
local $SIG{PIPE} = sub { die "spooler pipe broke" };
print $spooler "stuff\n";
close $spooler || die "bad spool: $! $?";
And here's how to start up a child process you intend to read from:
open(my $status, "-|", "netstat -an 2>&1")
|| die "can't fork: $!";
while (<$status>) {
next if /^(tcp|udp)/;
print;
}
close $status || die "bad netstat: $! $?";
Be aware that these operations are full Unix forks, which means they may
not be correctly implemented on all alien systems. See "open" in
perlport for portability details.
In the two-argument form of ooppeenn(()), a pipe open can be achieved by either
appending or prepending a pipe symbol to the second argument:
open(my $spooler, "| cat -v | lpr -h 2>/dev/null")
|| die "can't fork: $!";
open(my $status, "netstat -an 2>&1 |")
|| die "can't fork: $!";
This can be used even on systems that do not support forking, but this
possibly allows code intended to read files to unexpectedly execute
programs. If one can be sure that a particular program is a Perl script
expecting filenames in @ARGV using the two-argument form of ooppeenn(()) or the
"<>" operator, the clever programmer can write something like this:
% program f1 "cmd1|" - f2 "cmd2|" f3 < tmpfile
and no matter which sort of shell it's called from, the Perl program will
read from the file _f_1, the process _c_m_d_1, standard input (_t_m_p_f_i_l_e in this
case), the _f_2 file, the _c_m_d_2 command, and finally the _f_3 file. Pretty
nifty, eh?
You might notice that you could use backticks for much the same effect as
opening a pipe for reading:
print grep { !/^(tcp|udp)/ } `netstat -an 2>&1`;
die "bad netstatus ($?)" if $?;
While this is true on the surface, it's much more efficient to process
the file one line or record at a time because then you don't have to read
the whole thing into memory at once. It also gives you finer control of
the whole process, letting you kill off the child process early if you'd
like.
Be careful to check the return values from both ooppeenn(()) and cclloossee(()). If
you're _w_r_i_t_i_n_g to a pipe, you should also trap SIGPIPE. Otherwise, think
of what happens when you start up a pipe to a command that doesn't exist:
the ooppeenn(()) will in all likelihood succeed (it only reflects the ffoorrkk(())'s
success), but then your output will fail--spectacularly. Perl can't know
whether the command worked, because your command is actually running in a
separate process whose eexxeecc(()) might have failed. Therefore, while
readers of bogus commands return just a quick EOF, writers to bogus
commands will get hit with a signal, which they'd best be prepared to
handle. Consider:
open(my $fh, "|-", "bogus") || die "can't fork: $!";
print $fh "bang\n"; # neither necessary nor sufficient
# to check print retval!
close($fh) || die "can't close: $!";
The reason for not checking the return value from pprriinntt(()) is because of
pipe buffering; physical writes are delayed. That won't blow up until
the close, and it will blow up with a SIGPIPE. To catch it, you could
use this:
$SIG{PIPE} = “IGNORE”; #
open(my $fh, "|-", "bogus") || die "can't fork: $!";
print $fh "bang\n";
close($fh) || die "can't close: status=$?";
FFiilleehhaannddlleess Both the main process and any child processes it forks share the same STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR filehandles. If both processes try to access them at once, strange things can happen. You may also want to close or reopen the filehandles for the child. You can get around this by opening your pipe with ooppeenn(()), but on some systems this means that the child process cannot outlive the parent.
BBaacckkggrroouunndd PPrroocceesssseess You can run a command in the background with:
system("cmd &");
The command's STDOUT and STDERR (and possibly STDIN, depending on your
shell) will be the same as the parent's. You won't need to catch SIGCHLD
because of the double-fork taking place; see below for details.
CCoommpplleettee DDiissssoocciiaattiioonn ooff CChhiilldd ffrroomm PPaarreenntt In some cases (starting server processes, for instance) you’ll want to completely dissociate the child process from the parent. This is often called daemonization. A well-behaved daemon will also cchhddiirr(()) to the root directory so it doesn’t prevent unmounting the filesystem containing the directory from which it was launched, and redirect its standard file descriptors from and to _/_d_e_v_/_n_u_l_l so that random output doesn’t wind up on the user’s terminal.
use POSIX "setsid";
sub daemonize {
chdir("/") || die "can't chdir to /: $!";
open(STDIN, "<", "/dev/null") || die "can't read /dev/null: $!";
open(STDOUT, ">", "/dev/null") || die "can't write /dev/null: $!";
defined(my $pid = fork()) || die "can't fork: $!";
exit if $pid; # non-zero now means I am the parent
(setsid() != -1) || die "Can't start a new session: $!";
open(STDERR, ">&", STDOUT) || die "can't dup stdout: $!";
}
The ffoorrkk(()) has to come before the sseettssiidd(()) to ensure you aren't a process
group leader; the sseettssiidd(()) will fail if you are. If your system doesn't
have the sseettssiidd(()) function, open _/_d_e_v_/_t_t_y and use the "TIOCNOTTY" iiooccttll(())
on it instead. See ttttyy(4) for details.
Non-Unix users should check their "_Y_o_u_r___O_S::Process" module for other
possible solutions.
SSaaffee PPiippee OOppeennss Another interesting approach to IPC is making your single program go multiprocess and communicate between–or even amongst–yourselves. The two-argument form of the ooppeenn(()) function will accept a file argument of either “-|” or “|-” to do a very interesting thing: it forks a child connected to the filehandle you’ve opened. The child is running the same program as the parent. This is useful for safely opening a file when running under an assumed UID or GID, for example. If you open a pipe _t_o minus, you can write to the filehandle you opened and your kid will find it in _h_i_s STDIN. If you open a pipe _f_r_o_m minus, you can read from the filehandle you opened whatever your kid writes to _h_i_s STDOUT.
my $PRECIOUS = "/path/to/some/safe/file";
my $sleep_count;
my $pid;
my $kid_to_write;
do {
$pid = open($kid_to_write, "|-");
unless (defined $pid) {
warn "cannot fork: $!";
die "bailing out" if $sleep_count++ > 6;
sleep 10;
}
} until defined $pid;
if ($pid) { # I am the parent
print $kid_to_write @some_data;
close($kid_to_write) || warn "kid exited $?";
} else { # I am the child
# drop permissions in setuid and/or setgid programs:
($>, $)) = ($<, $();
open (my $outfile, ">", $PRECIOUS)
|| die "can't open $PRECIOUS: $!";
while (<STDIN>) {
print $outfile; # child STDIN is parent $kid_to_write
}
close($outfile) || die "can't close $PRECIOUS: $!";
exit(0); # don't forget this!!
}
Another common use for this construct is when you need to execute
something without the shell's interference. With ssyysstteemm(()), it's
straightforward, but you can't use a pipe open or backticks safely.
That's because there's no way to stop the shell from getting its hands on
your arguments. Instead, use lower-level control to call eexxeecc(())
directly.
Here's a safe backtick or pipe open for read:
my $pid = open(my $kid_to_read, "-|");
defined($pid) || die "can't fork: $!";
if ($pid) { # parent
while (<$kid_to_read>) {
# do something interesting
}
close($kid_to_read) || warn "kid exited $?";
} else { # child
($>, $)) = ($<, $(); # suid only
exec($program, @options, @args)
|| die "can't exec program: $!";
# NOTREACHED #
}
And here's a safe pipe open for writing:
my $pid = open(my $kid_to_write, "|-");
defined($pid) || die "can't fork: $!";
$SIG{PIPE} = sub { die "whoops, $program pipe broke" };
if ($pid) { # parent
print $kid_to_write @data;
close($kid_to_write) || warn "kid exited $?";
} else { # child
($>, $)) = ($<, $();
exec($program, @options, @args)
|| die "can't exec program: $!";
# NOTREACHED #
}
It is very easy to dead-lock a process using this form of ooppeenn(()), or
indeed with any use of ppiippee(()) with multiple subprocesses. The example
above is "safe" because it is simple and calls eexxeecc(()). See "Avoiding
Pipe Deadlocks" for general safety principles, but there are extra
gotchas with Safe Pipe Opens.
In particular, if you opened the pipe using "open $fh, "|-"", then you
cannot simply use cclloossee(()) in the parent process to close an unwanted
writer. Consider this code:
my $pid = open(my $writer, "|-"); # fork open a kid
defined($pid) || die "first fork failed: $!";
if ($pid) {
if (my $sub_pid = fork()) {
defined($sub_pid) || die "second fork failed: $!";
close($writer) || die "couldn't close writer: $!";
# now do something else...
}
else {
# first write to $writer
# ...
# then when finished
close($writer) || die "couldn't close writer: $!";
exit(0);
}
}
else {
# first do something with STDIN, then
exit(0);
}
In the example above, the true parent does not want to write to the
$writer filehandle, so it closes it. However, because $writer was opened
using "open $fh, "|-"", it has a special behavior: closing it calls
wwaaiittppiidd(()) (see "waitpid" in perlfunc), which waits for the subprocess to
exit. If the child process ends up waiting for something happening in
the section marked "do something else", you have deadlock.
This can also be a problem with intermediate subprocesses in more
complicated code, which will call wwaaiittppiidd(()) on all open filehandles
during global destruction--in no predictable order.
To solve this, you must manually use ppiippee(()), ffoorrkk(()), and the form of
ooppeenn(()) which sets one file descriptor to another, as shown below:
pipe(my $reader, my $writer) || die "pipe failed: $!";
my $pid = fork();
defined($pid) || die "first fork failed: $!";
if ($pid) {
close $reader;
if (my $sub_pid = fork()) {
defined($sub_pid) || die "first fork failed: $!";
close($writer) || die "can't close writer: $!";
}
else {
# write to $writer...
# ...
# then when finished
close($writer) || die "can't close writer: $!";
exit(0);
}
# write to $writer...
}
else {
open(STDIN, "<&", $reader) || die "can't reopen STDIN: $!";
close($writer) || die "can't close writer: $!";
# do something...
exit(0);
}
Since Perl 5.8.0, you can also use the list form of "open" for pipes.
This is preferred when you wish to avoid having the shell interpret
metacharacters that may be in your command string.
So for example, instead of using:
open(my $ps_pipe, "-|", "ps aux") || die "can't open ps pipe: $!";
One would use either of these:
open(my $ps_pipe, "-|", "ps", "aux")
|| die "can't open ps pipe: $!";
my @ps_args = qw[ ps aux ];
open(my $ps_pipe, "-|", @ps_args)
|| die "can't open @ps_args|: $!";
Because there are more than three arguments to ooppeenn(()), it forks the ppss(1)
command _w_i_t_h_o_u_t spawning a shell, and reads its standard output via the
$ps_pipe filehandle. The corresponding syntax to _w_r_i_t_e to command pipes
is to use "|-" in place of "-|".
This was admittedly a rather silly example, because you're using string
literals whose content is perfectly safe. There is therefore no cause to
resort to the harder-to-read, multi-argument form of pipe ooppeenn(()).
However, whenever you cannot be assured that the program arguments are
free of shell metacharacters, the fancier form of ooppeenn(()) should be used.
For example:
my @grep_args = ("egrep", "-i", $some_pattern, @many_files);
open(my $grep_pipe, "-|", @grep_args)
|| die "can't open @grep_args|: $!";
Here the multi-argument form of pipe ooppeenn(()) is preferred because the
pattern and indeed even the filenames themselves might hold
metacharacters.
AAvvooiiddiinngg PPiippee DDeeaaddlloocckkss Whenever you have more than one subprocess, you must be careful that each closes whichever half of any pipes created for interprocess communication it is not using. This is because any child process reading from the pipe and expecting an EOF will never receive it, and therefore never exit. A single process closing a pipe is not enough to close it; the last process with the pipe open must close it for it to read EOF.
Certain built-in Unix features help prevent this most of the time. For
instance, filehandles have a "close on exec" flag, which is set _e_n _m_a_s_s_e
under control of the $^F variable. This is so any filehandles you didn't
explicitly route to the STDIN, STDOUT or STDERR of a child _p_r_o_g_r_a_m will
be automatically closed.
Always explicitly and immediately call cclloossee(()) on the writable end of any
pipe, unless that process is actually writing to it. Even if you don't
explicitly call cclloossee(()), Perl will still cclloossee(()) all filehandles during
global destruction. As previously discussed, if those filehandles have
been opened with Safe Pipe Open, this will result in calling wwaaiittppiidd(()),
which may again deadlock.
BBiiddiirreeccttiioonnaall CCoommmmuunniiccaattiioonn wwiitthh AAnnootthheerr PPrroocceessss While this works reasonably well for unidirectional communication, what about bidirectional communication? The most obvious approach doesn’t work:
# THIS DOES NOT WORK!! #
open(my $prog_for_reading_and_writing, "| some program |")
If you forget to "use warnings", you'll miss out entirely on the helpful
diagnostic message:
Can't do bidirectional pipe at -e line 1.
If you really want to, you can use the standard ooppeenn22(()) from the
IPC::Open2 module to catch both ends. There's also an ooppeenn33(()) in
IPC::Open3 for tridirectional I/O so you can also catch your child's
STDERR, but doing so would then require an awkward sseelleecctt(()) loop and
wouldn't allow you to use normal Perl input operations.
If you look at its source, you'll see that ooppeenn22(()) uses low-level
primitives like the ppiippee(()) and eexxeecc(()) syscalls to create all the
connections. Although it might have been more efficient by using
ssoocckkeettppaaiirr(()), this would have been even less portable than it already is.
The ooppeenn22(()) and ooppeenn33(()) functions are unlikely to work anywhere except on
a Unix system, or at least one purporting POSIX compliance.
Here's an example of using ooppeenn22(()):
use IPC::Open2;
my $pid = open2(my $reader, my $writer, "cat -un");
print $writer "stuff\n";
my $got = <$reader>;
waitpid $pid, 0;
The problem with this is that buffering is really going to ruin your day.
Even though your $writer filehandle is auto-flushed so the process on the
other end gets your data in a timely manner, you can't usually do
anything to force that process to give its data to you in a similarly
quick fashion. In this special case, we could actually so, because we
gave _c_a_t a --uu flag to make it unbuffered. But very few commands are
designed to operate over pipes, so this seldom works unless you yourself
wrote the program on the other end of the double-ended pipe.
A solution to this is to use a library which uses pseudottys to make your
program behave more reasonably. This way you don't have to have control
over the source code of the program you're using. The "Expect" module
from CPAN also addresses this kind of thing. This module requires two
other modules from CPAN, "IO::Pty" and "IO::Stty". It sets up a pseudo
terminal to interact with programs that insist on talking to the terminal
device driver. If your system is supported, this may be your best bet.
BBiiddiirreeccttiioonnaall CCoommmmuunniiccaattiioonn wwiitthh YYoouurrsseellff If you want, you may make low-level ppiippee(()) and ffoorrkk(()) syscalls to stitch this together by hand. This example only talks to itself, but you could reopen the appropriate handles to STDIN and STDOUT and call other processes. (The following example lacks proper error checking.)
#!/usr/bin/perl
# pipe1 - bidirectional communication using two pipe pairs
# designed for the socketpair-challenged
use v5.36;
use IO::Handle; # enable autoflush method before Perl 5.14
pipe(my $parent_rdr, my $child_wtr); # XXX: check failure?
pipe(my $child_rdr, my $parent_wtr); # XXX: check failure?
$child_wtr->autoflush(1);
$parent_wtr->autoflush(1);
if ($pid = fork()) {
close $parent_rdr;
close $parent_wtr;
print $child_wtr "Parent Pid $$ is sending this\n";
chomp(my $line = <$child_rdr>);
print "Parent Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n";
close $child_rdr; close $child_wtr;
waitpid($pid, 0);
} else {
die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined $pid;
close $child_rdr;
close $child_wtr;
chomp(my $line = <$parent_rdr>);
print "Child Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n";
print $parent_wtr "Child Pid $$ is sending this\n";
close $parent_rdr;
close $parent_wtr;
exit(0);
}
But you don't actually have to make two pipe calls. If you have the
ssoocckkeettppaaiirr(()) system call, it will do this all for you.
#!/usr/bin/perl
# pipe2 - bidirectional communication using socketpair
# "the best ones always go both ways"
use v5.36;
use Socket;
use IO::Handle; # enable autoflush method before Perl 5.14
# We say AF_UNIX because although *_LOCAL is the
# POSIX 1003.1g form of the constant, many machines
# still don't have it.
socketpair(my $child, my $parent, AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, PF_UNSPEC)
|| die "socketpair: $!";
$child->autoflush(1);
$parent->autoflush(1);
if ($pid = fork()) {
close $parent;
print $child "Parent Pid $$ is sending this\n";
chomp(my $line = <$child>);
print "Parent Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n";
close $child;
waitpid($pid, 0);
} else {
die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined $pid;
close $child;
chomp(my $line = <$parent>);
print "Child Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n";
print $parent "Child Pid $$ is sending this\n";
close $parent;
exit(0);
}
SSoocckkeettss:: CClliieenntt//SSeerrvveerr CCoommmmuunniiccaattiioonn While not entirely limited to Unix-derived operating systems (e.g., WinSock on PCs provides socket support, as do some VMS libraries), you might not have sockets on your system, in which case this section probably isn’t going to do you much good. With sockets, you can do both virtual circuits like TCP streams and datagrams like UDP packets. You may be able to do even more depending on your system.
The Perl functions for dealing with sockets have the same names as the
corresponding system calls in C, but their arguments tend to differ for
two reasons. First, Perl filehandles work differently than C file
descriptors. Second, Perl already knows the length of its strings, so
you don't need to pass that information.
One of the major problems with ancient, antemillennial socket code in
Perl was that it used hard-coded values for some of the constants, which
severely hurt portability. If you ever see code that does anything like
explicitly setting "$AF_INET = 2", you know you're in for big trouble.
An immeasurably superior approach is to use the Socket module, which more
reliably grants access to the various constants and functions you'll
need.
If you're not writing a server/client for an existing protocol like NNTP
or SMTP, you should give some thought to how your server will know when
the client has finished talking, and vice-versa. Most protocols are
based on one-line messages and responses (so one party knows the other
has finished when a "\n" is received) or multi-line messages and
responses that end with a period on an empty line ("\n.\n" terminates a
message/response).
IInntteerrnneett LLiinnee TTeerrmmiinnaattoorrss The Internet line terminator is “\015\012”. Under ASCII variants of Unix, that could usually be written as “\r\n”, but under other systems, “\r\n” might at times be “\015\015\012”, “\012\012\015”, or something completely different. The standards specify writing “\015\012” to be conformant (be strict in what you provide), but they also recommend accepting a lone “\012” on input (be lenient in what you require). We haven’t always been very good about that in the code in this manpage, but unless you’re on a Mac from way back in its pre-Unix dark ages, you’ll probably be ok.
IInntteerrnneett TTCCPP CClliieennttss aanndd SSeerrvveerrss Use Internet-domain sockets when you want to do client-server communication that might extend to machines outside of your own system.
Here's a sample TCP client using Internet-domain sockets:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use Socket;
my $remote = shift || "localhost";
my $port = shift || 2345; # random port
if ($port =~ /\D/) { $port = getservbyname($port, "tcp") }
die "No port" unless $port;
my $iaddr = inet_aton($remote) || die "no host: $remote";
my $paddr = sockaddr_in($port, $iaddr);
my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp");
socket(my $sock, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!";
connect($sock, $paddr) || die "connect: $!";
while (my $line = <$sock>) {
print $line;
}
close ($sock) || die "close: $!";
exit(0);
And here's a corresponding server to go along with it. We'll leave the
address as "INADDR_ANY" so that the kernel can choose the appropriate
interface on multihomed hosts. If you want sit on a particular interface
(like the external side of a gateway or firewall machine), fill this in
with your real address instead.
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use v5.36;
BEGIN { $ENV{PATH} = "/usr/bin:/bin" }
use Socket;
use Carp;
my $EOL = "\015\012";
sub logmsg { print "$0 $$: @_ at ", scalar localtime(), "\n" }
my $port = shift || 2345;
die "invalid port" unless $port =~ /^ \d+ $/x;
my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp");
socket(my $server, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!";
setsockopt($server, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1))
|| die "setsockopt: $!";
bind($server, sockaddr_in($port, INADDR_ANY)) || die "bind: $!";
listen($server, SOMAXCONN) || die "listen: $!";
logmsg "server started on port $port";
for (my $paddr; $paddr = accept(my $client, $server); close $client) {
my($port, $iaddr) = sockaddr_in($paddr);
my $name = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET);
logmsg "connection from $name [",
inet_ntoa($iaddr), "]
at port $port";
print $client "Hello there, $name, it's now ",
scalar localtime(), $EOL;
}
And here's a multitasking version. It's multitasked in that like most
typical servers, it spawns (ffoorrkk(())s) a child server to handle the client
request so that the master server can quickly go back to service a new
client.
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use v5.36;
BEGIN { $ENV{PATH} = "/usr/bin:/bin" }
use Socket;
use Carp;
my $EOL = "\015\012";
sub spawn; # forward declaration
sub logmsg { print "$0 $$: @_ at ", scalar localtime(), "\n" }
my $port = shift || 2345;
die "invalid port" unless $port =~ /^ \d+ $/x;
my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp");
socket(my $server, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!";
setsockopt($server, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1))
|| die "setsockopt: $!";
bind($server, sockaddr_in($port, INADDR_ANY)) || die "bind: $!";
listen($server, SOMAXCONN) || die "listen: $!";
logmsg "server started on port $port";
my $waitedpid = 0;
use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";
use Errno;
sub REAPER {
local $!; # don't let waitpid() overwrite current error
while ((my $pid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0 && WIFEXITED($?)) {
logmsg "reaped $waitedpid" . ($? ? " with exit $?" : "");
}
$SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER; # loathe SysV
}
$SIG{CHLD} = &REAPER; #
while (1) {
my $paddr = accept(my $client, $server) || do {
# try again if accept() returned because got a signal
next if $!{EINTR};
die "accept: $!";
};
my ($port, $iaddr) = sockaddr_in($paddr);
my $name = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET);
logmsg "connection from $name [",
inet_ntoa($iaddr),
"] at port $port";
spawn $client, sub {
$| = 1;
print "Hello there, $name, it's now ",
scalar localtime(),
$EOL; #
exec "/usr/games/fortune" # XXX: "wrong" line terminators
or confess "can't exec fortune: $!";
};
close $client;
}
sub spawn {
my $client = shift;
my $coderef = shift;
unless (@_ == 0 && $coderef && ref($coderef) eq "CODE") {
confess "usage: spawn CLIENT CODEREF";
}
my $pid;
unless (defined($pid = fork())) {
logmsg "cannot fork: $!";
return;
}
elsif ($pid) {
logmsg "begat $pid";
return; # I'm the parent
}
# else I'm the child -- go spawn
open(STDIN, "<&", $client) || die "can't dup client to stdin";
open(STDOUT, ">&", $client) || die "can't dup client to stdout";
## open(STDERR, ">&", STDOUT) || die "can't dup stdout to stderr";
exit($coderef->());
}
This server takes the trouble to clone off a child version via ffoorrkk(()) for
each incoming request. That way it can handle many requests at once,
which you might not always want. Even if you don't ffoorrkk(()), the lliisstteenn(())
will allow that many pending connections. Forking servers have to be
particularly careful about cleaning up their dead children (called
"zombies" in Unix parlance), because otherwise you'll quickly fill up
your process table. The REAPER subroutine is used here to call wwaaiittppiidd(())
for any child processes that have finished, thereby ensuring that they
terminate cleanly and don't join the ranks of the living dead.
Within the while loop we call aacccceepptt(()) and check to see if it returns a
false value. This would normally indicate a system error needs to be
reported. However, the introduction of safe signals (see "Deferred
Signals (Safe Signals)" above) in Perl 5.8.0 means that aacccceepptt(()) might
also be interrupted when the process receives a signal. This typically
happens when one of the forked subprocesses exits and notifies the parent
process with a CHLD signal.
If aacccceepptt(()) is interrupted by a signal, $! will be set to EINTR. If this
happens, we can safely continue to the next iteration of the loop and
another call to aacccceepptt(()). It is important that your signal handling code
not modify the value of $!, or else this test will likely fail. In the
REAPER subroutine we create a local version of $! before calling
wwaaiittppiidd(()). When wwaaiittppiidd(()) sets $! to ECHILD as it inevitably does when
it has no more children waiting, it updates the local copy and leaves the
original unchanged.
You should use the --TT flag to enable taint checking (see perlsec) even if
we aren't running setuid or setgid. This is always a good idea for
servers or any program run on behalf of someone else (like CGI scripts),
because it lessens the chances that people from the outside will be able
to compromise your system. Note that perl can be built without taint
support. There are two different modes: in one, --TT will silently do
nothing. In the other mode --TT results in a fatal error.
Let's look at another TCP client. This one connects to the TCP "time"
service on a number of different machines and shows how far their clocks
differ from the system on which it's being run:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use Socket;
my $SECS_OF_70_YEARS = 2208988800;
sub ctime { scalar localtime(shift() || time()) }
my $iaddr = gethostbyname("localhost");
my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp");
my $port = getservbyname("time", "tcp");
my $paddr = sockaddr_in(0, $iaddr);
$| = 1;
printf "%-24s %8s %s\n", "localhost", 0, ctime();
foreach my $host (@ARGV) {
printf "%-24s ", $host;
my $hisiaddr = inet_aton($host) || die "unknown host";
my $hispaddr = sockaddr_in($port, $hisiaddr);
socket(my $socket, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto)
|| die "socket: $!";
connect($socket, $hispaddr) || die "connect: $!";
my $rtime = pack("C4", ());
read($socket, $rtime, 4);
close($socket);
my $histime = unpack("N", $rtime) - $SECS_OF_70_YEARS;
printf "%8d %s\n", $histime - time(), ctime($histime);
}
UUnniixx--DDoommaaiinn TTCCPP CClliieennttss aanndd SSeerrvveerrss That’s fine for Internet-domain clients and servers, but what about local communications? While you can use the same setup, sometimes you don’t want to. Unix-domain sockets are local to the current host, and are often used internally to implement pipes. Unlike Internet domain sockets, Unix domain sockets can show up in the file system with an llss(1) listing.
% ls -l /dev/log
srw-rw-rw- 1 root 0 Oct 31 07:23 /dev/log
You can test for these with Perl's --SS file test:
unless (-S "/dev/log") {
die "something's wicked with the log system";
}
Here's a sample Unix-domain client:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use Socket;
my $rendezvous = shift || "catsock";
socket(my $sock, PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0) || die "socket: $!";
connect($sock, sockaddr_un($rendezvous)) || die "connect: $!";
while (defined(my $line = <$sock>)) {
print $line;
}
exit(0);
And here's a corresponding server. You don't have to worry about silly
network terminators here because Unix domain sockets are guaranteed to be
on the localhost, and thus everything works right.
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use v5.36;
use Socket;
use Carp;
BEGIN { $ENV{PATH} = "/usr/bin:/bin" }
sub spawn; # forward declaration
sub logmsg { print "$0 $$: @_ at ", scalar localtime(), "\n" }
my $NAME = "catsock";
my $uaddr = sockaddr_un($NAME);
my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp");
socket(my $server, PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0) || die "socket: $!";
unlink($NAME);
bind ($server, $uaddr) || die "bind: $!";
listen($server, SOMAXCONN) || die "listen: $!";
logmsg "server started on $NAME";
my $waitedpid;
use POSIX ":sys_wait_h";
sub REAPER {
my $child;
while (($waitedpid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0) {
logmsg "reaped $waitedpid" . ($? ? " with exit $?" : "");
}
$SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER; # loathe SysV
}
$SIG{CHLD} = &REAPER; #
for ( $waitedpid = 0;
accept(my $client, $server) || $waitedpid;
$waitedpid = 0, close $client)
{
next if $waitedpid;
logmsg "connection on $NAME";
spawn $client, sub {
print "Hello there, it's now ", scalar localtime(), "\n";
exec("/usr/games/fortune") || die "can't exec fortune: $!";
};
}
sub spawn {
my $client = shift();
my $coderef = shift();
unless (@_ == 0 && $coderef && ref($coderef) eq "CODE") {
confess "usage: spawn CLIENT CODEREF";
}
my $pid;
unless (defined($pid = fork())) {
logmsg "cannot fork: $!";
return;
}
elsif ($pid) {
logmsg "begat $pid";
return; # I'm the parent
}
else {
# I'm the child -- go spawn
}
open(STDIN, "<&", $client)
|| die "can't dup client to stdin";
open(STDOUT, ">&", $client)
|| die "can't dup client to stdout";
## open(STDERR, ">&", STDOUT)
## || die "can't dup stdout to stderr";
exit($coderef->());
}
As you see, it's remarkably similar to the Internet domain TCP server, so
much so, in fact, that we've omitted several duplicate
functions--ssppaawwnn(()), llooggmmssgg(()), ccttiimmee(()), and RREEAAPPEERR(())--which are the same
as in the other server.
So why would you ever want to use a Unix domain socket instead of a
simpler named pipe? Because a named pipe doesn't give you sessions. You
can't tell one process's data from another's. With socket programming,
you get a separate session for each client; that's why aacccceepptt(()) takes two
arguments.
For example, let's say that you have a long-running database server
daemon that you want folks to be able to access from the Web, but only if
they go through a CGI interface. You'd have a small, simple CGI program
that does whatever checks and logging you feel like, and then acts as a
Unix-domain client and connects to your private server.
TTCCPP CClliieennttss wwiitthh IIOO::::SSoocckkeett For those preferring a higher-level interface to socket programming, the IO::Socket module provides an object-oriented approach. If for some reason you lack this module, you can just fetch IO::Socket from CPAN, where you’ll also find modules providing easy interfaces to the following systems: DNS, FTP, Ident (RFC 931), NIS and NISPlus, NNTP, Ping, POP3, SMTP, SNMP, SSLeay, Telnet, and Time–to name just a few.
AA SSiimmppllee CClliieenntt Here’s a client that creates a TCP connection to the “daytime” service at port 13 of the host name “localhost” and prints out everything that the server there cares to provide.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use IO::Socket;
my $remote = IO::Socket::INET->new(
Proto => "tcp",
PeerAddr => "localhost",
PeerPort => "daytime(13)",
)
|| die "can't connect to daytime service on localhost";
while (<$remote>) { print }
When you run this program, you should get something back that looks like
this:
Wed May 14 08:40:46 MDT 1997
Here are what those parameters to the nneeww(()) constructor mean:
"Proto"
This is which protocol to use. In this case, the socket handle
returned will be connected to a TCP socket, because we want a stream-
oriented connection, that is, one that acts pretty much like a plain
old file. Not all sockets are this of this type. For example, the
UDP protocol can be used to make a datagram socket, used for message-
passing.
"PeerAddr"
This is the name or Internet address of the remote host the server is
running on. We could have specified a longer name like
"www.perl.com", or an address like "207.171.7.72". For demonstration
purposes, we've used the special hostname "localhost", which should
always mean the current machine you're running on. The corresponding
Internet address for localhost is "127.0.0.1", if you'd rather use
that.
"PeerPort"
This is the service name or port number we'd like to connect to. We
could have gotten away with using just "daytime" on systems with a
well-configured system services file,[FOOTNOTE: The system services
file is found in _/_e_t_c_/_s_e_r_v_i_c_e_s under Unixy systems.] but here we've
specified the port number (13) in parentheses. Using just the number
would have also worked, but numeric literals make careful programmers
nervous.
AA WWeebbggeett CClliieenntt Here’s a simple client that takes a remote host to fetch a document from, and then a list of files to get from that host. This is a more interesting client than the previous one because it first sends something to the server before fetching the server’s response.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use IO::Socket;
unless (@ARGV > 1) { die "usage: $0 host url ..." }
my $host = shift(@ARGV);
my $EOL = "\015\012";
my $BLANK = $EOL x 2;
for my $document (@ARGV) {
my $remote = IO::Socket::INET->new( Proto => "tcp",
PeerAddr => $host,
PeerPort => "http(80)",
) || die "cannot connect to httpd on $host";
$remote->autoflush(1);
print $remote "GET $document HTTP/1.0" . $BLANK;
while ( <$remote> ) { print }
close $remote;
}
The web server handling the HTTP service is assumed to be at its standard
port, number 80. If the server you're trying to connect to is at a
different port, like 1080 or 8080, you should specify it as the named-
parameter pair, "PeerPort => 8080". The "autoflush" method is used on
the socket because otherwise the system would buffer up the output we
sent it. (If you're on a prehistoric Mac, you'll also need to change
every "\n" in your code that sends data over the network to be a
"\015\012" instead.)
Connecting to the server is only the first part of the process: once you
have the connection, you have to use the server's language. Each server
on the network has its own little command language that it expects as
input. The string that we send to the server starting with "GET" is in
HTTP syntax. In this case, we simply request each specified document.
Yes, we really are making a new connection for each document, even though
it's the same host. That's the way you always used to have to speak
HTTP. Recent versions of web browsers may request that the remote server
leave the connection open a little while, but the server doesn't have to
honor such a request.
Here's an example of running that program, which we'll call _w_e_b_g_e_t:
% webget www.perl.com /guanaco.html
HTTP/1.1 404 File Not Found
Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 18:02:32 GMT
Server: Apache/1.2b6
Connection: close
Content-type: text/html
<HEAD><TITLE>404 File Not Found</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY><H1>File Not Found</H1>
The requested URL /guanaco.html was not found on this server.<P>
#
Ok, so that's not very interesting, because it didn't find that
particular document. But a long response wouldn't have fit on this page.
For a more featureful version of this program, you should look to the
_l_w_p_-_r_e_q_u_e_s_t program included with the LWP modules from CPAN.
IInntteerraaccttiivvee CClliieenntt wwiitthh IIOO::::SSoocckkeett Well, that’s all fine if you want to send one command and get one answer, but what about setting up something fully interactive, somewhat like the way _t_e_l_n_e_t works? That way you can type a line, get the answer, type a line, get the answer, etc.
This client is more complicated than the two we've done so far, but if
you're on a system that supports the powerful "fork" call, the solution
isn't that rough. Once you've made the connection to whatever service
you'd like to chat with, call "fork" to clone your process. Each of
these two identical process has a very simple job to do: the parent
copies everything from the socket to standard output, while the child
simultaneously copies everything from standard input to the socket. To
accomplish the same thing using just one process would be _m_u_c_h harder,
because it's easier to code two processes to do one thing than it is to
code one process to do two things. (This keep-it-simple principle a
cornerstones of the Unix philosophy, and good software engineering as
well, which is probably why it's spread to other systems.)
Here's the code:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use IO::Socket;
unless (@ARGV == 2) { die "usage: $0 host port" }
my ($host, $port) = @ARGV;
# create a tcp connection to the specified host and port
my $handle = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto => "tcp",
PeerAddr => $host,
PeerPort => $port)
|| die "can't connect to port $port on $host: $!";
$handle->autoflush(1); # so output gets there right away
print STDERR "[Connected to $host:$port]\n";
# split the program into two processes, identical twins
die "can't fork: $!" unless defined(my $kidpid = fork());
# the if{} block runs only in the parent process
if ($kidpid) {
# copy the socket to standard output
while (defined (my $line = <$handle>)) {
print STDOUT $line;
}
kill("TERM", $kidpid); # send SIGTERM to child
}
# the else{} block runs only in the child process
else {
# copy standard input to the socket
while (defined (my $line = <STDIN>)) {
print $handle $line;
}
exit(0); # just in case
}
The "kill" function in the parent's "if" block is there to send a signal
to our child process, currently running in the "else" block, as soon as
the remote server has closed its end of the connection.
If the remote server sends data a byte at time, and you need that data
immediately without waiting for a newline (which might not happen), you
may wish to replace the "while" loop in the parent with the following:
my $byte;
while (sysread($handle, $byte, 1) == 1) {
print STDOUT $byte;
}
Making a system call for each byte you want to read is not very efficient
(to put it mildly) but is the simplest to explain and works reasonably
well.
TTCCPP SSeerrvveerrss wwiitthh IIOO::::SSoocckkeett As always, setting up a server is little bit more involved than running a client. The model is that the server creates a special kind of socket that does nothing but listen on a particular port for incoming connections. It does this by calling the “IO::Socket::INET->new()” method with slightly different arguments than the client did.
Proto
This is which protocol to use. Like our clients, we'll still specify
"tcp" here.
LocalPort
We specify a local port in the "LocalPort" argument, which we didn't
do for the client. This is service name or port number for which you
want to be the server. (Under Unix, ports under 1024 are restricted
to the superuser.) In our sample, we'll use port 9000, but you can
use any port that's not currently in use on your system. If you try
to use one already in used, you'll get an "Address already in use"
message. Under Unix, the "netstat -a" command will show which
services current have servers.
Listen
The "Listen" parameter is set to the maximum number of pending
connections we can accept until we turn away incoming clients. Think
of it as a call-waiting queue for your telephone. The low-level
Socket module has a special symbol for the system maximum, which is
SOMAXCONN. #
Reuse
The "Reuse" parameter is needed so that we restart our server
manually without waiting a few minutes to allow system buffers to
clear out.
Once the generic server socket has been created using the parameters
listed above, the server then waits for a new client to connect to it.
The server blocks in the "accept" method, which eventually accepts a
bidirectional connection from the remote client. (Make sure to autoflush
this handle to circumvent buffering.)
To add to user-friendliness, our server prompts the user for commands.
Most servers don't do this. Because of the prompt without a newline,
you'll have to use the "sysread" variant of the interactive client above.
This server accepts one of five different commands, sending output back
to the client. Unlike most network servers, this one handles only one
incoming client at a time. Multitasking servers are covered in Chapter
16 of the Camel.
Here's the code.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use IO::Socket;
use Net::hostent; # for OOish version of gethostbyaddr
my $PORT = 9000; # pick something not in use
my $server = IO::Socket::INET->new( Proto => "tcp",
LocalPort => $PORT,
Listen => SOMAXCONN,
Reuse => 1);
die "can't setup server" unless $server;
print "[Server $0 accepting clients]\n";
while (my $client = $server->accept()) {
$client->autoflush(1);
print $client "Welcome to $0; type help for command list.\n";
my $hostinfo = gethostbyaddr($client->peeraddr);
printf "[Connect from %s]\n",
$hostinfo ? $hostinfo->name : $client->peerhost;
print $client "Command? ";
while ( <$client>) {
next unless /\S/; # blank line
if (/quit|exit/i) { last }
elsif (/date|time/i) { printf $client "%s\n", scalar localtime() }
elsif (/who/i ) { print $client `who 2>&1` }
elsif (/cookie/i ) { print $client `/usr/games/fortune 2>&1` }
elsif (/motd/i ) { print $client `cat /etc/motd 2>&1` }
else {
print $client "Commands: quit date who cookie motd\n";
}
} continue {
print $client "Command? ";
}
close $client;
}
UUDDPP:: MMeessssaaggee PPaassssiinngg Another kind of client-server setup is one that uses not connections, but messages. UDP communications involve much lower overhead but also provide less reliability, as there are no promises that messages will arrive at all, let alone in order and unmangled. Still, UDP offers some advantages over TCP, including being able to “broadcast” or “multicast” to a whole bunch of destination hosts at once (usually on your local subnet). If you find yourself overly concerned about reliability and start building checks into your message system, then you probably should use just TCP to start with.
UDP datagrams are _n_o_t a bytestream and should not be treated as such.
This makes using I/O mechanisms with internal buffering like stdio (i.e.
pprriinntt(()) and friends) especially cumbersome. Use ssyysswwrriittee(()), or better
sseenndd(()), like in the example below.
Here's a UDP program similar to the sample Internet TCP client given
earlier. However, instead of checking one host at a time, the UDP
version will check many of them asynchronously by simulating a multicast
and then using sseelleecctt(()) to do a timed-out wait for I/O. To do something
similar with TCP, you'd have to use a different socket handle for each
host.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use v5.36;
use Socket;
use Sys::Hostname;
my $SECS_OF_70_YEARS = 2_208_988_800;
my $iaddr = gethostbyname(hostname());
my $proto = getprotobyname("udp");
my $port = getservbyname("time", "udp");
my $paddr = sockaddr_in(0, $iaddr); # 0 means let kernel pick
socket(my $socket, PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!";
bind($socket, $paddr) || die "bind: $!";
$| = 1;
printf "%-12s %8s %s\n", "localhost", 0, scalar localtime();
my $count = 0;
for my $host (@ARGV) {
$count++;
my $hisiaddr = inet_aton($host) || die "unknown host";
my $hispaddr = sockaddr_in($port, $hisiaddr);
defined(send($socket, 0, 0, $hispaddr)) || die "send $host: $!";
}
my $rout = my $rin = "";
vec($rin, fileno($socket), 1) = 1;
# timeout after 10.0 seconds
while ($count && select($rout = $rin, undef, undef, 10.0)) {
my $rtime = "";
my $hispaddr = recv($socket, $rtime, 4, 0) || die "recv: $!";
my ($port, $hisiaddr) = sockaddr_in($hispaddr);
my $host = gethostbyaddr($hisiaddr, AF_INET);
my $histime = unpack("N", $rtime) - $SECS_OF_70_YEARS;
printf "%-12s ", $host;
printf "%8d %s\n", $histime - time(), scalar localtime($histime);
$count--;
}
This example does not include any retries and may consequently fail to
contact a reachable host. The most prominent reason for this is
congestion of the queues on the sending host if the number of hosts to
contact is sufficiently large.
SSyyssVV IIPPCC While System V IPC isn’t so widely used as sockets, it still has some interesting uses. However, you cannot use SysV IPC or Berkeley mmmmaapp(()) to have a variable shared amongst several processes. That’s because Perl would reallocate your string when you weren’t wanting it to. You might look into the “IPC::Shareable” or “threads::shared” modules for that.
Here's a small example showing shared memory usage.
use IPC::SysV qw(IPC_PRIVATE IPC_RMID S_IRUSR S_IWUSR);
my $size = 2000;
my $id = shmget(IPC_PRIVATE, $size, S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR);
defined($id) || die "shmget: $!";
print "shm key $id\n";
my $message = "Message #1";
shmwrite($id, $message, 0, 60) || die "shmwrite: $!";
print "wrote: '$message'\n";
shmread($id, my $buff, 0, 60) || die "shmread: $!";
print "read : '$buff'\n";
# the buffer of shmread is zero-character end-padded.
substr($buff, index($buff, "\0")) = "";
print "un" unless $buff eq $message;
print "swell\n";
print "deleting shm $id\n";
shmctl($id, IPC_RMID, 0) || die "shmctl: $!";
Here's an example of a semaphore:
use IPC::SysV qw(IPC_CREAT);
my $IPC_KEY = 1234;
my $id = semget($IPC_KEY, 10, 0666 | IPC_CREAT);
defined($id) || die "semget: $!";
print "sem id $id\n";
Put this code in a separate file to be run in more than one process.
Call the file _t_a_k_e:
# create a semaphore
my $IPC_KEY = 1234;
my $id = semget($IPC_KEY, 0, 0);
defined($id) || die "semget: $!";
my $semnum = 0;
my $semflag = 0;
# "take" semaphore
# wait for semaphore to be zero
my $semop = 0;
my $opstring1 = pack("s!s!s!", $semnum, $semop, $semflag);
# Increment the semaphore count
$semop = 1;
my $opstring2 = pack("s!s!s!", $semnum, $semop, $semflag);
my $opstring = $opstring1 . $opstring2;
semop($id, $opstring) || die "semop: $!";
Put this code in a separate file to be run in more than one process.
Call this file _g_i_v_e:
# "give" the semaphore
# run this in the original process and you will see
# that the second process continues
my $IPC_KEY = 1234;
my $id = semget($IPC_KEY, 0, 0);
die unless defined($id);
my $semnum = 0;
my $semflag = 0;
# Decrement the semaphore count
my $semop = -1;
my $opstring = pack("s!s!s!", $semnum, $semop, $semflag);
semop($id, $opstring) || die "semop: $!";
The SysV IPC code above was written long ago, and it's definitely clunky
looking. For a more modern look, see the IPC::SysV module.
A small example demonstrating SysV message queues:
use IPC::SysV qw(IPC_PRIVATE IPC_RMID IPC_CREAT S_IRUSR S_IWUSR);
my $id = msgget(IPC_PRIVATE, IPC_CREAT | S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR);
defined($id) || die "msgget failed: $!";
my $sent = "message";
my $type_sent = 1234;
msgsnd($id, pack("l! a*", $type_sent, $sent), 0)
|| die "msgsnd failed: $!";
msgrcv($id, my $rcvd_buf, 60, 0, 0)
|| die "msgrcv failed: $!";
my($type_rcvd, $rcvd) = unpack("l! a*", $rcvd_buf);
if ($rcvd eq $sent) {
print "okay\n";
} else {
print "not okay\n";
}
msgctl($id, IPC_RMID, 0) || die "msgctl failed: $!\n";
NNOOTTEESS #
Most of these routines quietly but politely return "undef" when they fail
instead of causing your program to die right then and there due to an
uncaught exception. (Actually, some of the new _S_o_c_k_e_t conversion
functions do ccrrooaakk(()) on bad arguments.) It is therefore essential to
check return values from these functions. Always begin your socket
programs this way for optimal success, and don't forget to add the --TT
taint-checking flag to the "#!" line for servers:
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use v5.36;
use sigtrap;
use Socket;
BBUUGGSS #
These routines all create system-specific portability problems. As noted
elsewhere, Perl is at the mercy of your C libraries for much of its
system behavior. It's probably safest to assume broken SysV semantics
for signals and to stick with simple TCP and UDP socket operations; e.g.,
don't try to pass open file descriptors over a local UDP datagram socket
if you want your code to stand a chance of being portable.
AAUUTTHHOORR #
Tom Christiansen, with occasional vestiges of Larry Wall's original
version and suggestions from the Perl Porters.
SSEEEE AALLSSOO #
There's a lot more to networking than this, but this should get you
started.
For intrepid programmers, the indispensable textbook is _U_n_i_x _N_e_t_w_o_r_k
_P_r_o_g_r_a_m_m_i_n_g_, _2_n_d _E_d_i_t_i_o_n_, _V_o_l_u_m_e _1 by W. Richard Stevens (published by
Prentice-Hall). Most books on networking address the subject from the
perspective of a C programmer; translation to Perl is left as an exercise
for the reader.
The IIOO::::SSoocckkeett(3) manpage describes the object library, and the SSoocckkeett(3)
manpage describes the low-level interface to sockets. Besides the
obvious functions in perlfunc, you should also check out the _m_o_d_u_l_e_s file
at your nearest CPAN site, especially
<http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html#ID5_Networking_>. See
perlmodlib or best yet, the _P_e_r_l _F_A_Q for a description of what CPAN is
and where to get it if the previous link doesn't work for you.
Section 5 of CPAN's _m_o_d_u_l_e_s file is devoted to "Networking, Device
Control (modems), and Interprocess Communication", and contains numerous
unbundled modules numerous networking modules, Chat and Expect
operations, CGI programming, DCE, FTP, IPC, NNTP, Proxy, Ptty, RPC, SNMP,
SMTP, Telnet, Threads, and ToolTalk--to name just a few.
perl v5.36.3 2023-02-15 PERLIPC(1)