I was having trouble with simulating the shell script "env | grep HOME" with a C program. I found that commenting out line 29 solved this problem, but I'm not really sure why! I read on another question that it was because dup2() was closing the fd in the child, but the man page doesn't indicate that. Can anyone give me a definitive reason and help me understand this behavior? Thank you!
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
int main(void){
pid_t childpid;
int fd[2];
if(pipe(fd) == -1){ /*setup a pipe*/
perror("Failed to setup pipeline");
return 1;
}
if((childpid = fork()) == -1){ /*fork a child*/
perror("Failed to fork a child");
return 1;
}
if(childpid == 0){ /*env is the child*/
if(dup2(fd[1],STDOUT_FILENO)==-1)
perror("Failed to redirect stdout of env");
else if(close(fd[0] == -1)) /*close unused file descriptor*/
perror("Failed to close extra pipe descriptors on env");
else{
execl("/usr/bin/env", "env", NULL); /*execute env*/
perror("Failed to exec env");
}
return 1;
}
if(dup2(fd[0],STDIN_FILENO)==-1) /*grep is the parent*/
perror("Failed to redirect stdin of grep");
//else if(close(fd[1]==-1))
//perror("Failed to close extra pipe file descriptors on grep");
else{
execl("/bin/grep", "grep", "HOME", NULL); /*execute "grep HOME"*/
perror("Failed to exec grep");
}
return 1;
}