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a0d0e21e LW |
1 | =head1 NAME |
2 | ||
184e9718 | 3 | perlipc - Perl interprocess communication (signals, fifos, pipes, safe subprocesses, sockets, and semaphores) |
a0d0e21e LW |
4 | |
5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION | |
6 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
7 | The basic IPC facilities of Perl are built out of the good old Unix |
8 | signals, named pipes, pipe opens, the Berkeley socket routines, and SysV | |
9 | IPC calls. Each is used in slightly different situations. | |
10 | ||
11 | =head1 Signals | |
12 | ||
490f90af JH |
13 | Perl uses a simple signal handling model: the %SIG hash contains names |
14 | or references of user-installed signal handlers. These handlers will | |
15 | be called with an argument which is the name of the signal that | |
16 | triggered it. A signal may be generated intentionally from a | |
17 | particular keyboard sequence like control-C or control-Z, sent to you | |
18 | from another process, or triggered automatically by the kernel when | |
cf21866a TC |
19 | special events transpire, like a child process exiting, your own process |
20 | running out of stack space, or hitting a process file-size limit. | |
4633a7c4 | 21 | |
a11adca0 | 22 | For example, to trap an interrupt signal, set up a handler like this: |
4633a7c4 | 23 | |
73af1a12 DG |
24 | our $shucks; |
25 | ||
4633a7c4 | 26 | sub catch_zap { |
322c2516 SF |
27 | my $signame = shift; |
28 | $shucks++; | |
29 | die "Somebody sent me a SIG$signame"; | |
54310121 | 30 | } |
82f82fdb | 31 | $SIG{INT} = __PACKAGE__ . "::catch_zap"; |
4633a7c4 LW |
32 | $SIG{INT} = \&catch_zap; # best strategy |
33 | ||
e6aa8b84 | 34 | Prior to Perl 5.8.0 it was necessary to do as little as you possibly |
490f90af JH |
35 | could in your handler; notice how all we do is set a global variable |
36 | and then raise an exception. That's because on most systems, | |
37 | libraries are not re-entrant; particularly, memory allocation and I/O | |
38 | routines are not. That meant that doing nearly I<anything> in your | |
39 | handler could in theory trigger a memory fault and subsequent core | |
ec488bcf | 40 | dump - see L</Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)> below. |
a11adca0 | 41 | |
4633a7c4 | 42 | The names of the signals are the ones listed out by C<kill -l> on your |
de7ba517 | 43 | system, or you can retrieve them using the CPAN module L<IPC::Signal>. |
4633a7c4 | 44 | |
cf21866a | 45 | You may also choose to assign the strings C<"IGNORE"> or C<"DEFAULT"> as |
4633a7c4 | 46 | the handler, in which case Perl will try to discard the signal or do the |
f648820c GS |
47 | default thing. |
48 | ||
19799a22 | 49 | On most Unix platforms, the C<CHLD> (sometimes also known as C<CLD>) signal |
cf21866a TC |
50 | has special behavior with respect to a value of C<"IGNORE">. |
51 | Setting C<$SIG{CHLD}> to C<"IGNORE"> on such a platform has the effect of | |
f648820c | 52 | not creating zombie processes when the parent process fails to C<wait()> |
cf21866a TC |
53 | on its child processes (i.e., child processes are automatically reaped). |
54 | Calling C<wait()> with C<$SIG{CHLD}> set to C<"IGNORE"> usually returns | |
f648820c GS |
55 | C<-1> on such platforms. |
56 | ||
cf21866a | 57 | Some signals can be neither trapped nor ignored, such as the KILL and STOP |
de7ba517 LT |
58 | (but not the TSTP) signals. Note that ignoring signals makes them disappear. |
59 | If you only want them blocked temporarily without them getting lost you'll | |
60 | have to use POSIX' sigprocmask. | |
4633a7c4 LW |
61 | |
62 | Sending a signal to a negative process ID means that you send the signal | |
cf21866a | 63 | to the entire Unix process group. This code sends a hang-up signal to all |
82f82fdb | 64 | processes in the current process group, and also sets $SIG{HUP} to C<"IGNORE"> |
cf21866a | 65 | so it doesn't kill itself: |
4633a7c4 | 66 | |
cf21866a | 67 | # block scope for local |
4633a7c4 | 68 | { |
cf21866a | 69 | local $SIG{HUP} = "IGNORE"; |
322c2516 | 70 | kill HUP => -$$; |
cf21866a | 71 | # snazzy writing of: kill("HUP", -$$) |
4633a7c4 | 72 | } |
a0d0e21e | 73 | |
4633a7c4 | 74 | Another interesting signal to send is signal number zero. This doesn't |
1e9c1022 | 75 | actually affect a child process, but instead checks whether it's alive |
de7ba517 | 76 | or has changed its UIDs. |
a0d0e21e | 77 | |
4633a7c4 | 78 | unless (kill 0 => $kid_pid) { |
322c2516 | 79 | warn "something wicked happened to $kid_pid"; |
54310121 | 80 | } |
a0d0e21e | 81 | |
de7ba517 LT |
82 | Signal number zero may fail because you lack permission to send the |
83 | signal when directed at a process whose real or saved UID is not | |
84 | identical to the real or effective UID of the sending process, even | |
85 | though the process is alive. You may be able to determine the cause of | |
86 | failure using C<$!> or C<%!>. | |
1e9c1022 | 87 | |
cf21866a | 88 | unless (kill(0 => $pid) || $!{EPERM}) { |
322c2516 | 89 | warn "$pid looks dead"; |
1e9c1022 JL |
90 | } |
91 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
92 | You might also want to employ anonymous functions for simple signal |
93 | handlers: | |
a0d0e21e | 94 | |
4633a7c4 | 95 | $SIG{INT} = sub { die "\nOutta here!\n" }; |
a0d0e21e | 96 | |
de7ba517 LT |
97 | SIGCHLD handlers require some special care. If a second child dies |
98 | while in the signal handler caused by the first death, we won't get | |
99 | another signal. So must loop here else we will leave the unreaped child | |
100 | as a zombie. And the next time two children die we get another zombie. | |
101 | And so on. | |
4633a7c4 | 102 | |
6a3992aa | 103 | use POSIX ":sys_wait_h"; |
de7ba517 LT |
104 | $SIG{CHLD} = sub { |
105 | while ((my $child = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0) { | |
322c2516 SF |
106 | $Kid_Status{$child} = $?; |
107 | } | |
de7ba517 | 108 | }; |
4633a7c4 LW |
109 | # do something that forks... |
110 | ||
cf21866a TC |
111 | Be careful: qx(), system(), and some modules for calling external commands |
112 | do a fork(), then wait() for the result. Thus, your signal handler | |
de7ba517 LT |
113 | will be called. Because wait() was already called by system() or qx(), |
114 | the wait() in the signal handler will see no more zombies and will | |
115 | therefore block. | |
0a18a49b | 116 | |
cf21866a | 117 | The best way to prevent this issue is to use waitpid(), as in the following |
0a18a49b MH |
118 | example: |
119 | ||
120 | use POSIX ":sys_wait_h"; # for nonblocking read | |
121 | ||
122 | my %children; | |
123 | ||
124 | $SIG{CHLD} = sub { | |
125 | # don't change $! and $? outside handler | |
cf21866a | 126 | local ($!, $?); |
fd440202 TC |
127 | while ( (my $pid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0 ) { |
128 | delete $children{$pid}; | |
129 | cleanup_child($pid, $?); | |
130 | } | |
0a18a49b MH |
131 | }; |
132 | ||
133 | while (1) { | |
134 | my $pid = fork(); | |
cf21866a | 135 | die "cannot fork" unless defined $pid; |
0a18a49b MH |
136 | if ($pid == 0) { |
137 | # ... | |
138 | exit 0; | |
139 | } else { | |
cf21866a | 140 | $children{$pid}=1; |
0a18a49b MH |
141 | # ... |
142 | system($command); | |
143 | # ... | |
144 | } | |
145 | } | |
146 | ||
147 | Signal handling is also used for timeouts in Unix. While safely | |
4633a7c4 LW |
148 | protected within an C<eval{}> block, you set a signal handler to trap |
149 | alarm signals and then schedule to have one delivered to you in some | |
150 | number of seconds. Then try your blocking operation, clearing the alarm | |
151 | when it's done but not before you've exited your C<eval{}> block. If it | |
de7ba517 | 152 | goes off, you'll use die() to jump out of the block. |
4633a7c4 LW |
153 | |
154 | Here's an example: | |
155 | ||
cf21866a | 156 | my $ALARM_EXCEPTION = "alarm clock restart"; |
54310121 | 157 | eval { |
cf21866a | 158 | local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die $ALARM_EXCEPTION }; |
54310121 | 159 | alarm 10; |
cf21866a TC |
160 | flock(FH, 2) # blocking write lock |
161 | || die "cannot flock: $!"; | |
54310121 | 162 | alarm 0; |
4633a7c4 | 163 | }; |
cf21866a | 164 | if ($@ && $@ !~ quotemeta($ALARM_EXCEPTION)) { die } |
4633a7c4 | 165 | |
8a4f6ac2 GS |
166 | If the operation being timed out is system() or qx(), this technique |
167 | is liable to generate zombies. If this matters to you, you'll | |
168 | need to do your own fork() and exec(), and kill the errant child process. | |
169 | ||
4633a7c4 | 170 | For more complex signal handling, you might see the standard POSIX |
cb0ee57a LM |
171 | module. Lamentably, this is almost entirely undocumented, but the |
172 | F<ext/POSIX/t/sigaction.t> file from the Perl source distribution has | |
173 | some examples in it. | |
4633a7c4 | 174 | |
28494392 SB |
175 | =head2 Handling the SIGHUP Signal in Daemons |
176 | ||
177 | A process that usually starts when the system boots and shuts down | |
178 | when the system is shut down is called a daemon (Disk And Execution | |
179 | MONitor). If a daemon process has a configuration file which is | |
180 | modified after the process has been started, there should be a way to | |
cf21866a TC |
181 | tell that process to reread its configuration file without stopping |
182 | the process. Many daemons provide this mechanism using a C<SIGHUP> | |
183 | signal handler. When you want to tell the daemon to reread the file, | |
184 | simply send it the C<SIGHUP> signal. | |
28494392 | 185 | |
28494392 SB |
186 | The following example implements a simple daemon, which restarts |
187 | itself every time the C<SIGHUP> signal is received. The actual code is | |
cf21866a TC |
188 | located in the subroutine C<code()>, which just prints some debugging |
189 | info to show that it works; it should be replaced with the real code. | |
28494392 | 190 | |
8bc5de20 SF |
191 | #!/usr/bin/perl |
192 | ||
193 | use strict; | |
194 | use warnings; | |
d6fd60d6 | 195 | |
28494392 SB |
196 | use POSIX (); |
197 | use FindBin (); | |
198 | use File::Basename (); | |
8bc5de20 | 199 | use File::Spec::Functions qw(catfile); |
d6fd60d6 | 200 | |
cf21866a | 201 | $| = 1; |
d6fd60d6 | 202 | |
28494392 SB |
203 | # make the daemon cross-platform, so exec always calls the script |
204 | # itself with the right path, no matter how the script was invoked. | |
205 | my $script = File::Basename::basename($0); | |
cf21866a | 206 | my $SELF = catfile($FindBin::Bin, $script); |
d6fd60d6 | 207 | |
28494392 | 208 | # POSIX unmasks the sigprocmask properly |
de7ba517 | 209 | $SIG{HUP} = sub { |
28494392 | 210 | print "got SIGHUP\n"; |
cf21866a | 211 | exec($SELF, @ARGV) || die "$0: couldn't restart: $!"; |
de7ba517 | 212 | }; |
d6fd60d6 | 213 | |
28494392 | 214 | code(); |
d6fd60d6 | 215 | |
28494392 SB |
216 | sub code { |
217 | print "PID: $$\n"; | |
218 | print "ARGV: @ARGV\n"; | |
cf21866a | 219 | my $count = 0; |
8bc5de20 | 220 | while (1) { |
28494392 | 221 | sleep 2; |
8bc5de20 | 222 | print ++$count, "\n"; |
28494392 SB |
223 | } |
224 | } | |
28494392 SB |
225 | |
226 | ||
ffc145e8 | 227 | =head2 Deferred Signals (Safe Signals) |
5a964f20 | 228 | |
e6aa8b84 | 229 | Before Perl 5.8.0, installing Perl code to deal with signals exposed you to |
cf21866a TC |
230 | danger from two things. First, few system library functions are |
231 | re-entrant. If the signal interrupts while Perl is executing one function | |
232 | (like malloc(3) or printf(3)), and your signal handler then calls the same | |
233 | function again, you could get unpredictable behavior--often, a core dump. | |
234 | Second, Perl isn't itself re-entrant at the lowest levels. If the signal | |
235 | interrupts Perl while Perl is changing its own internal data structures, | |
236 | similarly unpredictable behavior may result. | |
5a964f20 | 237 | |
a11adca0 NIS |
238 | There were two things you could do, knowing this: be paranoid or be |
239 | pragmatic. The paranoid approach was to do as little as possible in your | |
5a964f20 TC |
240 | signal handler. Set an existing integer variable that already has a |
241 | value, and return. This doesn't help you if you're in a slow system call, | |
7b34eba2 | 242 | which will just restart. That means you have to C<die> to longjmp(3) out |
5a964f20 TC |
243 | of the handler. Even this is a little cavalier for the true paranoiac, |
244 | who avoids C<die> in a handler because the system I<is> out to get you. | |
b432a672 AL |
245 | The pragmatic approach was to say "I know the risks, but prefer the |
246 | convenience", and to do anything you wanted in your signal handler, | |
a11adca0 NIS |
247 | and be prepared to clean up core dumps now and again. |
248 | ||
e6aa8b84 | 249 | Perl 5.8.0 and later avoid these problems by "deferring" signals. That is, |
cf21866a TC |
250 | when the signal is delivered to the process by the system (to the C code |
251 | that implements Perl) a flag is set, and the handler returns immediately. | |
252 | Then at strategic "safe" points in the Perl interpreter (e.g. when it is | |
253 | about to execute a new opcode) the flags are checked and the Perl level | |
254 | handler from %SIG is executed. The "deferred" scheme allows much more | |
255 | flexibility in the coding of signal handlers as we know the Perl | |
de7ba517 LT |
256 | interpreter is in a safe state, and that we are not in a system library |
257 | function when the handler is called. However the implementation does | |
cf21866a | 258 | differ from previous Perls in the following ways: |
5a964f20 | 259 | |
a11adca0 | 260 | =over 4 |
5a964f20 | 261 | |
e188fdae CB |
262 | =item Long-running opcodes |
263 | ||
cf21866a | 264 | As the Perl interpreter looks at signal flags only when it is about |
e188fdae CB |
265 | to execute a new opcode, a signal that arrives during a long-running |
266 | opcode (e.g. a regular expression operation on a very large string) will | |
267 | not be seen until the current opcode completes. | |
268 | ||
82f82fdb | 269 | If a signal of any given type fires multiple times during an opcode |
e188fdae | 270 | (such as from a fine-grained timer), the handler for that signal will |
cf21866a | 271 | be called only once, after the opcode completes; all other |
e188fdae CB |
272 | instances will be discarded. Furthermore, if your system's signal queue |
273 | gets flooded to the point that there are signals that have been raised | |
274 | but not yet caught (and thus not deferred) at the time an opcode | |
275 | completes, those signals may well be caught and deferred during | |
276 | subsequent opcodes, with sometimes surprising results. For example, you | |
277 | may see alarms delivered even after calling C<alarm(0)> as the latter | |
278 | stops the raising of alarms but does not cancel the delivery of alarms | |
279 | raised but not yet caught. Do not depend on the behaviors described in | |
280 | this paragraph as they are side effects of the current implementation and | |
281 | may change in future versions of Perl. | |
a11adca0 | 282 | |
a11adca0 NIS |
283 | =item Interrupting IO |
284 | ||
cf21866a TC |
285 | When a signal is delivered (e.g., SIGINT from a control-C) the operating |
286 | system breaks into IO operations like I<read>(2), which is used to | |
287 | implement Perl's readline() function, the C<< <> >> operator. On older | |
288 | Perls the handler was called immediately (and as C<read> is not "unsafe", | |
289 | this worked well). With the "deferred" scheme the handler is I<not> called | |
290 | immediately, and if Perl is using the system's C<stdio> library that | |
291 | library may restart the C<read> without returning to Perl to give it a | |
292 | chance to call the %SIG handler. If this happens on your system the | |
293 | solution is to use the C<:perlio> layer to do IO--at least on those handles | |
294 | that you want to be able to break into with signals. (The C<:perlio> layer | |
295 | checks the signal flags and calls %SIG handlers before resuming IO | |
296 | operation.) | |
297 | ||
e6aa8b84 | 298 | The default in Perl 5.8.0 and later is to automatically use |
490f90af | 299 | the C<:perlio> layer. |
a11adca0 | 300 | |
abf9167d DM |
301 | Note that it is not advisable to access a file handle within a signal |
302 | handler where that signal has interrupted an I/O operation on that same | |
303 | handle. While perl will at least try hard not to crash, there are no | |
304 | guarantees of data integrity; for example, some data might get dropped or | |
305 | written twice. | |
306 | ||
cf21866a TC |
307 | Some networking library functions like gethostbyname() are known to have |
308 | their own implementations of timeouts which may conflict with your | |
309 | timeouts. If you have problems with such functions, try using the POSIX | |
310 | sigaction() function, which bypasses Perl safe signals. Be warned that | |
311 | this does subject you to possible memory corruption, as described above. | |
312 | ||
313 | Instead of setting C<$SIG{ALRM}>: | |
91d81acc | 314 | |
e399c6ae SB |
315 | local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm" }; |
316 | ||
317 | try something like the following: | |
318 | ||
e46aa1dd KW |
319 | use POSIX qw(SIGALRM); |
320 | POSIX::sigaction(SIGALRM, | |
321 | POSIX::SigAction->new(sub { die "alarm" })) | |
de7ba517 | 322 | || die "Error setting SIGALRM handler: $!\n"; |
91d81acc | 323 | |
a1966b02 | 324 | Another way to disable the safe signal behavior locally is to use |
cf21866a TC |
325 | the C<Perl::Unsafe::Signals> module from CPAN, which affects |
326 | all signals. | |
a1966b02 | 327 | |
9ce5b4ad SG |
328 | =item Restartable system calls |
329 | ||
330 | On systems that supported it, older versions of Perl used the | |
331 | SA_RESTART flag when installing %SIG handlers. This meant that | |
332 | restartable system calls would continue rather than returning when | |
333 | a signal arrived. In order to deliver deferred signals promptly, | |
82f82fdb | 334 | Perl 5.8.0 and later do I<not> use SA_RESTART. Consequently, |
9ce5b4ad SG |
335 | restartable system calls can fail (with $! set to C<EINTR>) in places |
336 | where they previously would have succeeded. | |
337 | ||
cf21866a | 338 | The default C<:perlio> layer retries C<read>, C<write> |
82f82fdb | 339 | and C<close> as described above; interrupted C<wait> and |
9ce5b4ad SG |
340 | C<waitpid> calls will always be retried. |
341 | ||
a11adca0 NIS |
342 | =item Signals as "faults" |
343 | ||
cf21866a | 344 | Certain signals like SEGV, ILL, and BUS are generated by virtual memory |
c69ca1d4 | 345 | addressing errors and similar "faults". These are normally fatal: there is |
de7ba517 | 346 | little a Perl-level handler can do with them. So Perl delivers them |
e188fdae | 347 | immediately rather than attempting to defer them. |
a11adca0 NIS |
348 | |
349 | =item Signals triggered by operating system state | |
350 | ||
490f90af | 351 | On some operating systems certain signal handlers are supposed to "do |
cf21866a | 352 | something" before returning. One example can be CHLD or CLD, which |
490f90af JH |
353 | indicates a child process has completed. On some operating systems the |
354 | signal handler is expected to C<wait> for the completed child | |
355 | process. On such systems the deferred signal scheme will not work for | |
cf21866a TC |
356 | those signals: it does not do the C<wait>. Again the failure will |
357 | look like a loop as the operating system will reissue the signal because | |
358 | there are completed child processes that have not yet been C<wait>ed for. | |
a11adca0 | 359 | |
818c4caa | 360 | =back |
a0d0e21e | 361 | |
cf21866a | 362 | If you want the old signal behavior back despite possible |
4ffa73a3 | 363 | memory corruption, set the environment variable C<PERL_SIGNALS> to |
cf21866a | 364 | C<"unsafe">. This feature first appeared in Perl 5.8.1. |
4ffa73a3 | 365 | |
9eed50dc DM |
366 | =head1 Named Pipes |
367 | ||
368 | A named pipe (often referred to as a FIFO) is an old Unix IPC | |
369 | mechanism for processes communicating on the same machine. It works | |
370 | just like regular anonymous pipes, except that the | |
371 | processes rendezvous using a filename and need not be related. | |
372 | ||
373 | To create a named pipe, use the C<POSIX::mkfifo()> function. | |
374 | ||
375 | use POSIX qw(mkfifo); | |
376 | mkfifo($path, 0700) || die "mkfifo $path failed: $!"; | |
377 | ||
378 | You can also use the Unix command mknod(1), or on some | |
379 | systems, mkfifo(1). These may not be in your normal path, though. | |
380 | ||
381 | # system return val is backwards, so && not || | |
382 | # | |
383 | $ENV{PATH} .= ":/etc:/usr/etc"; | |
384 | if ( system("mknod", $path, "p") | |
385 | && system("mkfifo", $path) ) | |
386 | { | |
387 | die "mk{nod,fifo} $path failed"; | |
388 | } | |
389 | ||
390 | ||
391 | A fifo is convenient when you want to connect a process to an unrelated | |
392 | one. When you open a fifo, the program will block until there's something | |
393 | on the other end. | |
394 | ||
395 | For example, let's say you'd like to have your F<.signature> file be a | |
396 | named pipe that has a Perl program on the other end. Now every time any | |
397 | program (like a mailer, news reader, finger program, etc.) tries to read | |
398 | from that file, the reading program will read the new signature from your | |
399 | program. We'll use the pipe-checking file-test operator, B<-p>, to find | |
400 | out whether anyone (or anything) has accidentally removed our fifo. | |
401 | ||
402 | chdir(); # go home | |
403 | my $FIFO = ".signature"; | |
404 | ||
405 | while (1) { | |
406 | unless (-p $FIFO) { | |
407 | unlink $FIFO; # discard any failure, will catch later | |
408 | require POSIX; # delayed loading of heavy module | |
409 | POSIX::mkfifo($FIFO, 0700) | |
410 | || die "can't mkfifo $FIFO: $!"; | |
411 | } | |
412 | ||
413 | # next line blocks till there's a reader | |
414 | open (FIFO, "> $FIFO") || die "can't open $FIFO: $!"; | |
415 | print FIFO "John Smith (smith\@host.org)\n", `fortune -s`; | |
416 | close(FIFO) || die "can't close $FIFO: $!"; | |
417 | sleep 2; # to avoid dup signals | |
418 | } | |
419 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
420 | =head1 Using open() for IPC |
421 | ||
490f90af JH |
422 | Perl's basic open() statement can also be used for unidirectional |
423 | interprocess communication by either appending or prepending a pipe | |
424 | symbol to the second argument to open(). Here's how to start | |
425 | something up in a child process you intend to write to: | |
4633a7c4 | 426 | |
54310121 | 427 | open(SPOOLER, "| cat -v | lpr -h 2>/dev/null") |
cf21866a | 428 | || die "can't fork: $!"; |
4633a7c4 LW |
429 | local $SIG{PIPE} = sub { die "spooler pipe broke" }; |
430 | print SPOOLER "stuff\n"; | |
cf21866a | 431 | close SPOOLER || die "bad spool: $! $?"; |
4633a7c4 LW |
432 | |
433 | And here's how to start up a child process you intend to read from: | |
434 | ||
435 | open(STATUS, "netstat -an 2>&1 |") | |
cf21866a | 436 | || die "can't fork: $!"; |
4633a7c4 | 437 | while (<STATUS>) { |
322c2516 SF |
438 | next if /^(tcp|udp)/; |
439 | print; | |
54310121 | 440 | } |
cf21866a | 441 | close STATUS || die "bad netstat: $! $?"; |
4633a7c4 | 442 | |
cf21866a TC |
443 | If one can be sure that a particular program is a Perl script expecting |
444 | filenames in @ARGV, the clever programmer can write something like this: | |
4633a7c4 | 445 | |
5a964f20 | 446 | % program f1 "cmd1|" - f2 "cmd2|" f3 < tmpfile |
4633a7c4 | 447 | |
cf21866a | 448 | and no matter which sort of shell it's called from, the Perl program will |
4633a7c4 LW |
449 | read from the file F<f1>, the process F<cmd1>, standard input (F<tmpfile> |
450 | in this case), the F<f2> file, the F<cmd2> command, and finally the F<f3> | |
451 | file. Pretty nifty, eh? | |
452 | ||
54310121 | 453 | You might notice that you could use backticks for much the |
4633a7c4 LW |
454 | same effect as opening a pipe for reading: |
455 | ||
456 | print grep { !/^(tcp|udp)/ } `netstat -an 2>&1`; | |
cf21866a | 457 | die "bad netstatus ($?)" if $?; |
4633a7c4 LW |
458 | |
459 | While this is true on the surface, it's much more efficient to process the | |
460 | file one line or record at a time because then you don't have to read the | |
19799a22 | 461 | whole thing into memory at once. It also gives you finer control of the |
cf21866a | 462 | whole process, letting you kill off the child process early if you'd like. |
4633a7c4 | 463 | |
cf21866a | 464 | Be careful to check the return values from both open() and close(). If |
4633a7c4 LW |
465 | you're I<writing> to a pipe, you should also trap SIGPIPE. Otherwise, |
466 | think of what happens when you start up a pipe to a command that doesn't | |
467 | exist: the open() will in all likelihood succeed (it only reflects the | |
468 | fork()'s success), but then your output will fail--spectacularly. Perl | |
cf21866a | 469 | can't know whether the command worked, because your command is actually |
4633a7c4 | 470 | running in a separate process whose exec() might have failed. Therefore, |
cf21866a TC |
471 | while readers of bogus commands return just a quick EOF, writers |
472 | to bogus commands will get hit with a signal, which they'd best be prepared | |
473 | to handle. Consider: | |
4633a7c4 | 474 | |
cf21866a | 475 | open(FH, "|bogus") || die "can't fork: $!"; |
82f82fdb | 476 | print FH "bang\n"; # neither necessary nor sufficient |
cf21866a TC |
477 | # to check print retval! |
478 | close(FH) || die "can't close: $!"; | |
5a964f20 | 479 | |
cf21866a TC |
480 | The reason for not checking the return value from print() is because of |
481 | pipe buffering; physical writes are delayed. That won't blow up until the | |
482 | close, and it will blow up with a SIGPIPE. To catch it, you could use | |
483 | this: | |
5a964f20 | 484 | |
cf21866a TC |
485 | $SIG{PIPE} = "IGNORE"; |
486 | open(FH, "|bogus") || die "can't fork: $!"; | |
487 | print FH "bang\n"; | |
488 | close(FH) || die "can't close: status=$?"; | |
4633a7c4 | 489 | |
68dc0745 | 490 | =head2 Filehandles |
491 | ||
5a964f20 TC |
492 | Both the main process and any child processes it forks share the same |
493 | STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR filehandles. If both processes try to access | |
45bc9206 | 494 | them at once, strange things can happen. You may also want to close |
5a964f20 TC |
495 | or reopen the filehandles for the child. You can get around this by |
496 | opening your pipe with open(), but on some systems this means that the | |
497 | child process cannot outlive the parent. | |
68dc0745 | 498 | |
499 | =head2 Background Processes | |
500 | ||
501 | You can run a command in the background with: | |
502 | ||
7b05b7e3 | 503 | system("cmd &"); |
68dc0745 | 504 | |
505 | The command's STDOUT and STDERR (and possibly STDIN, depending on your | |
506 | shell) will be the same as the parent's. You won't need to catch | |
cf21866a | 507 | SIGCHLD because of the double-fork taking place; see below for details. |
68dc0745 | 508 | |
509 | =head2 Complete Dissociation of Child from Parent | |
510 | ||
511 | In some cases (starting server processes, for instance) you'll want to | |
893af57a | 512 | completely dissociate the child process from the parent. This is |
cf21866a TC |
513 | often called daemonization. A well-behaved daemon will also chdir() |
514 | to the root directory so it doesn't prevent unmounting the filesystem | |
515 | containing the directory from which it was launched, and redirect its | |
516 | standard file descriptors from and to F</dev/null> so that random | |
517 | output doesn't wind up on the user's terminal. | |
893af57a | 518 | |
e46aa1dd | 519 | use POSIX "setsid"; |
893af57a | 520 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
521 | sub daemonize { |
522 | chdir("/") || die "can't chdir to /: $!"; | |
523 | open(STDIN, "< /dev/null") || die "can't read /dev/null: $!"; | |
524 | open(STDOUT, "> /dev/null") || die "can't write to /dev/null: $!"; | |
525 | defined(my $pid = fork()) || die "can't fork: $!"; | |
526 | exit if $pid; # non-zero now means I am the parent | |
527 | (setsid() != -1) || die "Can't start a new session: $!"; | |
528 | open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT") || die "can't dup stdout: $!"; | |
529 | } | |
5a964f20 | 530 | |
cf21866a TC |
531 | The fork() has to come before the setsid() to ensure you aren't a |
532 | process group leader; the setsid() will fail if you are. If your | |
893af57a | 533 | system doesn't have the setsid() function, open F</dev/tty> and use the |
f979aebc | 534 | C<TIOCNOTTY> ioctl() on it instead. See tty(4) for details. |
5a964f20 | 535 | |
82f82fdb | 536 | Non-Unix users should check their C<< I<Your_OS>::Process >> module for |
cf21866a | 537 | other possible solutions. |
68dc0745 | 538 | |
4633a7c4 LW |
539 | =head2 Safe Pipe Opens |
540 | ||
541 | Another interesting approach to IPC is making your single program go | |
cf21866a | 542 | multiprocess and communicate between--or even amongst--yourselves. The |
4633a7c4 LW |
543 | open() function will accept a file argument of either C<"-|"> or C<"|-"> |
544 | to do a very interesting thing: it forks a child connected to the | |
545 | filehandle you've opened. The child is running the same program as the | |
546 | parent. This is useful for safely opening a file when running under an | |
547 | assumed UID or GID, for example. If you open a pipe I<to> minus, you can | |
cf21866a | 548 | write to the filehandle you opened and your kid will find it in I<his> |
4633a7c4 | 549 | STDIN. If you open a pipe I<from> minus, you can read from the filehandle |
cf21866a | 550 | you opened whatever your kid writes to I<his> STDOUT. |
4633a7c4 | 551 | |
6ca3c6c6 | 552 | use English; |
cf21866a TC |
553 | my $PRECIOUS = "/path/to/some/safe/file"; |
554 | my $sleep_count; | |
555 | my $pid; | |
4633a7c4 | 556 | |
54310121 | 557 | do { |
322c2516 SF |
558 | $pid = open(KID_TO_WRITE, "|-"); |
559 | unless (defined $pid) { | |
560 | warn "cannot fork: $!"; | |
561 | die "bailing out" if $sleep_count++ > 6; | |
562 | sleep 10; | |
563 | } | |
4633a7c4 LW |
564 | } until defined $pid; |
565 | ||
82f82fdb | 566 | if ($pid) { # I am the parent |
322c2516 | 567 | print KID_TO_WRITE @some_data; |
cf21866a TC |
568 | close(KID_TO_WRITE) || warn "kid exited $?"; |
569 | } else { # I am the child | |
570 | # drop permissions in setuid and/or setgid programs: | |
82f82fdb SF |
571 | ($EUID, $EGID) = ($UID, $GID); |
572 | open (OUTFILE, "> $PRECIOUS") | |
cf21866a | 573 | || die "can't open $PRECIOUS: $!"; |
322c2516 | 574 | while (<STDIN>) { |
cf21866a | 575 | print OUTFILE; # child's STDIN is parent's KID_TO_WRITE |
322c2516 | 576 | } |
cf21866a TC |
577 | close(OUTFILE) || die "can't close $PRECIOUS: $!"; |
578 | exit(0); # don't forget this!! | |
54310121 | 579 | } |
4633a7c4 LW |
580 | |
581 | Another common use for this construct is when you need to execute | |
582 | something without the shell's interference. With system(), it's | |
54310121 | 583 | straightforward, but you can't use a pipe open or backticks safely. |
4633a7c4 LW |
584 | That's because there's no way to stop the shell from getting its hands on |
585 | your arguments. Instead, use lower-level control to call exec() directly. | |
586 | ||
54310121 | 587 | Here's a safe backtick or pipe open for read: |
4633a7c4 | 588 | |
cf21866a TC |
589 | my $pid = open(KID_TO_READ, "-|"); |
590 | defined($pid) || die "can't fork: $!"; | |
4633a7c4 | 591 | |
cf21866a | 592 | if ($pid) { # parent |
322c2516 | 593 | while (<KID_TO_READ>) { |
cf21866a | 594 | # do something interesting |
322c2516 | 595 | } |
cf21866a | 596 | close(KID_TO_READ) || warn "kid exited $?"; |
4633a7c4 | 597 | |
cf21866a | 598 | } else { # child |
322c2516 SF |
599 | ($EUID, $EGID) = ($UID, $GID); # suid only |
600 | exec($program, @options, @args) | |
cf21866a | 601 | || die "can't exec program: $!"; |
322c2516 | 602 | # NOTREACHED |
54310121 | 603 | } |
4633a7c4 | 604 | |
4633a7c4 LW |
605 | And here's a safe pipe open for writing: |
606 | ||
cf21866a TC |
607 | my $pid = open(KID_TO_WRITE, "|-"); |
608 | defined($pid) || die "can't fork: $!"; | |
609 | ||
76c0e0db | 610 | $SIG{PIPE} = sub { die "whoops, $program pipe broke" }; |
4633a7c4 | 611 | |
cf21866a TC |
612 | if ($pid) { # parent |
613 | print KID_TO_WRITE @data; | |
322c2516 | 614 | close(KID_TO_WRITE) || warn "kid exited $?"; |
4633a7c4 | 615 | |
cf21866a | 616 | } else { # child |
322c2516 SF |
617 | ($EUID, $EGID) = ($UID, $GID); |
618 | exec($program, @options, @args) | |
cf21866a | 619 | || die "can't exec program: $!"; |
322c2516 | 620 | # NOTREACHED |
54310121 | 621 | } |
4633a7c4 | 622 | |
c40e8e9b | 623 | It is very easy to dead-lock a process using this form of open(), or |
82f82fdb | 624 | indeed with any use of pipe() with multiple subprocesses. The |
cf21866a | 625 | example above is "safe" because it is simple and calls exec(). See |
c40e8e9b SV |
626 | L</"Avoiding Pipe Deadlocks"> for general safety principles, but there |
627 | are extra gotchas with Safe Pipe Opens. | |
628 | ||
629 | In particular, if you opened the pipe using C<open FH, "|-">, then you | |
630 | cannot simply use close() in the parent process to close an unwanted | |
631 | writer. Consider this code: | |
632 | ||
cf21866a TC |
633 | my $pid = open(WRITER, "|-"); # fork open a kid |
634 | defined($pid) || die "first fork failed: $!"; | |
c40e8e9b SV |
635 | if ($pid) { |
636 | if (my $sub_pid = fork()) { | |
cf21866a TC |
637 | defined($sub_pid) || die "second fork failed: $!"; |
638 | close(WRITER) || die "couldn't close WRITER: $!"; | |
639 | # now do something else... | |
c40e8e9b SV |
640 | } |
641 | else { | |
cf21866a TC |
642 | # first write to WRITER |
643 | # ... | |
644 | # then when finished | |
645 | close(WRITER) || die "couldn't close WRITER: $!"; | |
646 | exit(0); | |
c40e8e9b SV |
647 | } |
648 | } | |
649 | else { | |
cf21866a TC |
650 | # first do something with STDIN, then |
651 | exit(0); | |
c40e8e9b SV |
652 | } |
653 | ||
cf21866a | 654 | In the example above, the true parent does not want to write to the WRITER |
c40e8e9b | 655 | filehandle, so it closes it. However, because WRITER was opened using |
cf21866a TC |
656 | C<open FH, "|-">, it has a special behavior: closing it calls |
657 | waitpid() (see L<perlfunc/waitpid>), which waits for the subprocess | |
c40e8e9b | 658 | to exit. If the child process ends up waiting for something happening |
cf21866a | 659 | in the section marked "do something else", you have deadlock. |
c40e8e9b | 660 | |
cf21866a | 661 | This can also be a problem with intermediate subprocesses in more |
c40e8e9b | 662 | complicated code, which will call waitpid() on all open filehandles |
cf21866a | 663 | during global destruction--in no predictable order. |
c40e8e9b SV |
664 | |
665 | To solve this, you must manually use pipe(), fork(), and the form of | |
cf21866a | 666 | open() which sets one file descriptor to another, as shown below: |
c40e8e9b | 667 | |
cf21866a | 668 | pipe(READER, WRITER) || die "pipe failed: $!"; |
c40e8e9b | 669 | $pid = fork(); |
cf21866a | 670 | defined($pid) || die "first fork failed: $!"; |
c40e8e9b | 671 | if ($pid) { |
322c2516 | 672 | close READER; |
c40e8e9b | 673 | if (my $sub_pid = fork()) { |
cf21866a TC |
674 | defined($sub_pid) || die "first fork failed: $!"; |
675 | close(WRITER) || die "can't close WRITER: $!"; | |
c40e8e9b SV |
676 | } |
677 | else { | |
678 | # write to WRITER... | |
cf21866a TC |
679 | # ... |
680 | # then when finished | |
681 | close(WRITER) || die "can't close WRITER: $!"; | |
682 | exit(0); | |
c40e8e9b SV |
683 | } |
684 | # write to WRITER... | |
685 | } | |
686 | else { | |
cf21866a TC |
687 | open(STDIN, "<&READER") || die "can't reopen STDIN: $!"; |
688 | close(WRITER) || die "can't close WRITER: $!"; | |
c40e8e9b | 689 | # do something... |
cf21866a | 690 | exit(0); |
c40e8e9b SV |
691 | } |
692 | ||
cf21866a TC |
693 | Since Perl 5.8.0, you can also use the list form of C<open> for pipes. |
694 | This is preferred when you wish to avoid having the shell interpret | |
695 | metacharacters that may be in your command string. | |
307eac13 | 696 | |
cf21866a | 697 | So for example, instead of using: |
307eac13 | 698 | |
cf21866a | 699 | open(PS_PIPE, "ps aux|") || die "can't open ps pipe: $!"; |
307eac13 | 700 | |
cf21866a | 701 | One would use either of these: |
4633a7c4 | 702 | |
82f82fdb | 703 | open(PS_PIPE, "-|", "ps", "aux") |
cf21866a | 704 | || die "can't open ps pipe: $!"; |
c40e8e9b | 705 | |
cf21866a TC |
706 | @ps_args = qw[ ps aux ]; |
707 | open(PS_PIPE, "-|", @ps_args) | |
708 | || die "can't open @ps_args|: $!"; | |
c40e8e9b | 709 | |
cf21866a TC |
710 | Because there are more than three arguments to open(), forks the ps(1) |
711 | command I<without> spawning a shell, and reads its standard output via the | |
712 | C<PS_PIPE> filehandle. The corresponding syntax to I<write> to command | |
82f82fdb | 713 | pipes is to use C<"|-"> in place of C<"-|">. |
c40e8e9b | 714 | |
cf21866a TC |
715 | This was admittedly a rather silly example, because you're using string |
716 | literals whose content is perfectly safe. There is therefore no cause to | |
faa783ac | 717 | resort to the harder-to-read, multi-argument form of pipe open(). However, |
cf21866a TC |
718 | whenever you cannot be assured that the program arguments are free of shell |
719 | metacharacters, the fancier form of open() should be used. For example: | |
c40e8e9b | 720 | |
cf21866a TC |
721 | @grep_args = ("egrep", "-i", $some_pattern, @many_files); |
722 | open(GREP_PIPE, "-|", @grep_args) | |
723 | || die "can't open @grep_args|: $!"; | |
724 | ||
725 | Here the multi-argument form of pipe open() is preferred because the | |
726 | pattern and indeed even the filenames themselves might hold metacharacters. | |
727 | ||
728 | Be aware that these operations are full Unix forks, which means they may | |
9fba1c80 | 729 | not be correctly implemented on all alien systems. |
cf21866a TC |
730 | |
731 | =head2 Avoiding Pipe Deadlocks | |
732 | ||
733 | Whenever you have more than one subprocess, you must be careful that each | |
734 | closes whichever half of any pipes created for interprocess communication | |
735 | it is not using. This is because any child process reading from the pipe | |
736 | and expecting an EOF will never receive it, and therefore never exit. A | |
737 | single process closing a pipe is not enough to close it; the last process | |
738 | with the pipe open must close it for it to read EOF. | |
739 | ||
740 | Certain built-in Unix features help prevent this most of the time. For | |
741 | instance, filehandles have a "close on exec" flag, which is set I<en masse> | |
742 | under control of the C<$^F> variable. This is so any filehandles you | |
743 | didn't explicitly route to the STDIN, STDOUT or STDERR of a child | |
744 | I<program> will be automatically closed. | |
745 | ||
746 | Always explicitly and immediately call close() on the writable end of any | |
747 | pipe, unless that process is actually writing to it. Even if you don't | |
748 | explicitly call close(), Perl will still close() all filehandles during | |
749 | global destruction. As previously discussed, if those filehandles have | |
750 | been opened with Safe Pipe Open, this will result in calling waitpid(), | |
751 | which may again deadlock. | |
c40e8e9b | 752 | |
7b05b7e3 | 753 | =head2 Bidirectional Communication with Another Process |
4633a7c4 LW |
754 | |
755 | While this works reasonably well for unidirectional communication, what | |
cf21866a | 756 | about bidirectional communication? The most obvious approach doesn't work: |
4633a7c4 | 757 | |
cf21866a | 758 | # THIS DOES NOT WORK!! |
c07a80fd | 759 | open(PROG_FOR_READING_AND_WRITING, "| some program |") |
4633a7c4 | 760 | |
cf21866a TC |
761 | If you forget to C<use warnings>, you'll miss out entirely on the |
762 | helpful diagnostic message: | |
4633a7c4 LW |
763 | |
764 | Can't do bidirectional pipe at -e line 1. | |
765 | ||
cf21866a TC |
766 | If you really want to, you can use the standard open2() from the |
767 | C<IPC::Open2> module to catch both ends. There's also an open3() in | |
768 | C<IPC::Open3> for tridirectional I/O so you can also catch your child's | |
769 | STDERR, but doing so would then require an awkward select() loop and | |
770 | wouldn't allow you to use normal Perl input operations. | |
4633a7c4 LW |
771 | |
772 | If you look at its source, you'll see that open2() uses low-level | |
cf21866a TC |
773 | primitives like the pipe() and exec() syscalls to create all the |
774 | connections. Although it might have been more efficient by using | |
775 | socketpair(), this would have been even less portable than it already | |
776 | is. The open2() and open3() functions are unlikely to work anywhere | |
777 | except on a Unix system, or at least one purporting POSIX compliance. | |
778 | ||
779 | =for TODO | |
780 | Hold on, is this even true? First it says that socketpair() is avoided | |
82f82fdb | 781 | for portability, but then it says it probably won't work except on |
cf21866a | 782 | Unixy systems anyway. Which one of those is true? |
4633a7c4 LW |
783 | |
784 | Here's an example of using open2(): | |
785 | ||
786 | use FileHandle; | |
787 | use IPC::Open2; | |
cf21866a | 788 | $pid = open2(*Reader, *Writer, "cat -un"); |
4633a7c4 LW |
789 | print Writer "stuff\n"; |
790 | $got = <Reader>; | |
791 | ||
cf21866a TC |
792 | The problem with this is that buffering is really going to ruin your |
793 | day. Even though your C<Writer> filehandle is auto-flushed so the process | |
794 | on the other end gets your data in a timely manner, you can't usually do | |
795 | anything to force that process to give its data to you in a similarly quick | |
796 | fashion. In this special case, we could actually so, because we gave | |
797 | I<cat> a B<-u> flag to make it unbuffered. But very few commands are | |
798 | designed to operate over pipes, so this seldom works unless you yourself | |
799 | wrote the program on the other end of the double-ended pipe. | |
800 | ||
801 | A solution to this is to use a library which uses pseudottys to make your | |
802 | program behave more reasonably. This way you don't have to have control | |
803 | over the source code of the program you're using. The C<Expect> module | |
804 | from CPAN also addresses this kind of thing. This module requires two | |
805 | other modules from CPAN, C<IO::Pty> and C<IO::Stty>. It sets up a pseudo | |
806 | terminal to interact with programs that insist on talking to the terminal | |
807 | device driver. If your system is supported, this may be your best bet. | |
c8db1d39 | 808 | |
5a964f20 TC |
809 | =head2 Bidirectional Communication with Yourself |
810 | ||
cf21866a TC |
811 | If you want, you may make low-level pipe() and fork() syscalls to stitch |
812 | this together by hand. This example only talks to itself, but you could | |
813 | reopen the appropriate handles to STDIN and STDOUT and call other processes. | |
814 | (The following example lacks proper error checking.) | |
5a964f20 | 815 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
816 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w |
817 | # pipe1 - bidirectional communication using two pipe pairs | |
818 | # designed for the socketpair-challenged | |
819 | use IO::Handle; # thousands of lines just for autoflush :-( | |
820 | pipe(PARENT_RDR, CHILD_WTR); # XXX: check failure? | |
821 | pipe(CHILD_RDR, PARENT_WTR); # XXX: check failure? | |
822 | CHILD_WTR->autoflush(1); | |
823 | PARENT_WTR->autoflush(1); | |
824 | ||
825 | if ($pid = fork()) { | |
826 | close PARENT_RDR; | |
827 | close PARENT_WTR; | |
828 | print CHILD_WTR "Parent Pid $$ is sending this\n"; | |
829 | chomp($line = <CHILD_RDR>); | |
830 | print "Parent Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n"; | |
831 | close CHILD_RDR; close CHILD_WTR; | |
832 | waitpid($pid, 0); | |
833 | } else { | |
834 | die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined $pid; | |
835 | close CHILD_RDR; | |
836 | close CHILD_WTR; | |
837 | chomp($line = <PARENT_RDR>); | |
838 | print "Child Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n"; | |
839 | print PARENT_WTR "Child Pid $$ is sending this\n"; | |
840 | close PARENT_RDR; | |
841 | close PARENT_WTR; | |
842 | exit(0); | |
843 | } | |
5a964f20 | 844 | |
a11adca0 | 845 | But you don't actually have to make two pipe calls. If you |
5a964f20 TC |
846 | have the socketpair() system call, it will do this all for you. |
847 | ||
e46aa1dd KW |
848 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w |
849 | # pipe2 - bidirectional communication using socketpair | |
850 | # "the best ones always go both ways" | |
851 | ||
852 | use Socket; | |
853 | use IO::Handle; # thousands of lines just for autoflush :-( | |
854 | ||
855 | # We say AF_UNIX because although *_LOCAL is the | |
856 | # POSIX 1003.1g form of the constant, many machines | |
857 | # still don't have it. | |
858 | socketpair(CHILD, PARENT, AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, PF_UNSPEC) | |
859 | || die "socketpair: $!"; | |
860 | ||
861 | CHILD->autoflush(1); | |
862 | PARENT->autoflush(1); | |
863 | ||
864 | if ($pid = fork()) { | |
865 | close PARENT; | |
866 | print CHILD "Parent Pid $$ is sending this\n"; | |
867 | chomp($line = <CHILD>); | |
868 | print "Parent Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n"; | |
869 | close CHILD; | |
870 | waitpid($pid, 0); | |
871 | } else { | |
872 | die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined $pid; | |
873 | close CHILD; | |
874 | chomp($line = <PARENT>); | |
875 | print "Child Pid $$ just read this: '$line'\n"; | |
876 | print PARENT "Child Pid $$ is sending this\n"; | |
877 | close PARENT; | |
878 | exit(0); | |
879 | } | |
5a964f20 | 880 | |
4633a7c4 | 881 | =head1 Sockets: Client/Server Communication |
a0d0e21e | 882 | |
cf21866a TC |
883 | While not entirely limited to Unix-derived operating systems (e.g., WinSock |
884 | on PCs provides socket support, as do some VMS libraries), you might not have | |
885 | sockets on your system, in which case this section probably isn't going to | |
886 | do you much good. With sockets, you can do both virtual circuits like TCP | |
887 | streams and datagrams like UDP packets. You may be able to do even more | |
4633a7c4 LW |
888 | depending on your system. |
889 | ||
cf21866a | 890 | The Perl functions for dealing with sockets have the same names as |
4633a7c4 | 891 | the corresponding system calls in C, but their arguments tend to differ |
cf21866a | 892 | for two reasons. First, Perl filehandles work differently than C file |
4633a7c4 LW |
893 | descriptors. Second, Perl already knows the length of its strings, so you |
894 | don't need to pass that information. | |
a0d0e21e | 895 | |
cf21866a TC |
896 | One of the major problems with ancient, antemillennial socket code in Perl |
897 | was that it used hard-coded values for some of the constants, which | |
898 | severely hurt portability. If you ever see code that does anything like | |
82f82fdb | 899 | explicitly setting C<$AF_INET = 2>, you know you're in for big trouble. |
cf21866a TC |
900 | An immeasurably superior approach is to use the C<Socket> module, which more |
901 | reliably grants access to the various constants and functions you'll need. | |
a0d0e21e | 902 | |
68dc0745 | 903 | If you're not writing a server/client for an existing protocol like |
904 | NNTP or SMTP, you should give some thought to how your server will | |
905 | know when the client has finished talking, and vice-versa. Most | |
906 | protocols are based on one-line messages and responses (so one party | |
4a6725af | 907 | knows the other has finished when a "\n" is received) or multi-line |
68dc0745 | 908 | messages and responses that end with a period on an empty line |
909 | ("\n.\n" terminates a message/response). | |
910 | ||
5a964f20 TC |
911 | =head2 Internet Line Terminators |
912 | ||
913 | The Internet line terminator is "\015\012". Under ASCII variants of | |
914 | Unix, that could usually be written as "\r\n", but under other systems, | |
915 | "\r\n" might at times be "\015\015\012", "\012\012\015", or something | |
916 | completely different. The standards specify writing "\015\012" to be | |
917 | conformant (be strict in what you provide), but they also recommend | |
cf21866a | 918 | accepting a lone "\012" on input (be lenient in what you require). |
5a964f20 | 919 | We haven't always been very good about that in the code in this manpage, |
82f82fdb | 920 | but unless you're on a Mac from way back in its pre-Unix dark ages, you'll |
cf21866a | 921 | probably be ok. |
5a964f20 | 922 | |
4633a7c4 | 923 | =head2 Internet TCP Clients and Servers |
a0d0e21e | 924 | |
4633a7c4 LW |
925 | Use Internet-domain sockets when you want to do client-server |
926 | communication that might extend to machines outside of your own system. | |
927 | ||
928 | Here's a sample TCP client using Internet-domain sockets: | |
929 | ||
930 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w | |
4633a7c4 LW |
931 | use strict; |
932 | use Socket; | |
cf21866a | 933 | my ($remote, $port, $iaddr, $paddr, $proto, $line); |
4633a7c4 | 934 | |
cf21866a | 935 | $remote = shift || "localhost"; |
4633a7c4 | 936 | $port = shift || 2345; # random port |
cf21866a | 937 | if ($port =~ /\D/) { $port = getservbyname($port, "tcp") } |
4633a7c4 | 938 | die "No port" unless $port; |
322c2516 | 939 | $iaddr = inet_aton($remote) || die "no host: $remote"; |
4633a7c4 LW |
940 | $paddr = sockaddr_in($port, $iaddr); |
941 | ||
cf21866a | 942 | $proto = getprotobyname("tcp"); |
322c2516 | 943 | socket(SOCK, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!"; |
cf21866a TC |
944 | connect(SOCK, $paddr) || die "connect: $!"; |
945 | while ($line = <SOCK>) { | |
322c2516 | 946 | print $line; |
54310121 | 947 | } |
4633a7c4 | 948 | |
cf21866a TC |
949 | close (SOCK) || die "close: $!"; |
950 | exit(0); | |
4633a7c4 LW |
951 | |
952 | And here's a corresponding server to go along with it. We'll | |
cf21866a | 953 | leave the address as C<INADDR_ANY> so that the kernel can choose |
54310121 | 954 | the appropriate interface on multihomed hosts. If you want sit |
c07a80fd | 955 | on a particular interface (like the external side of a gateway |
cf21866a | 956 | or firewall machine), fill this in with your real address instead. |
c07a80fd | 957 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
958 | #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw |
959 | use strict; | |
960 | BEGIN { $ENV{PATH} = "/usr/bin:/bin" } | |
961 | use Socket; | |
962 | use Carp; | |
963 | my $EOL = "\015\012"; | |
c07a80fd | 964 | |
e46aa1dd | 965 | sub logmsg { print "$0 $$: @_ at ", scalar localtime(), "\n" } |
c07a80fd | 966 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
967 | my $port = shift || 2345; |
968 | die "invalid port" unless $port =~ /^ \d+ $/x; | |
51ee6500 | 969 | |
e46aa1dd | 970 | my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp"); |
6a3992aa | 971 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
972 | socket(Server, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!"; |
973 | setsockopt(Server, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1)) | |
974 | || die "setsockopt: $!"; | |
975 | bind(Server, sockaddr_in($port, INADDR_ANY)) || die "bind: $!"; | |
976 | listen(Server, SOMAXCONN) || die "listen: $!"; | |
c07a80fd | 977 | |
e46aa1dd | 978 | logmsg "server started on port $port"; |
c07a80fd | 979 | |
e46aa1dd | 980 | my $paddr; |
c07a80fd | 981 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
982 | for ( ; $paddr = accept(Client, Server); close Client) { |
983 | my($port, $iaddr) = sockaddr_in($paddr); | |
984 | my $name = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET); | |
c07a80fd | 985 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
986 | logmsg "connection from $name [", |
987 | inet_ntoa($iaddr), "] | |
988 | at port $port"; | |
c07a80fd | 989 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
990 | print Client "Hello there, $name, it's now ", |
991 | scalar localtime(), $EOL; | |
992 | } | |
c07a80fd | 993 | |
5e220227 | 994 | And here's a multitasking version. It's multitasked in that |
cf21866a | 995 | like most typical servers, it spawns (fork()s) a slave server to |
c07a80fd | 996 | handle the client request so that the master server can quickly |
997 | go back to service a new client. | |
4633a7c4 | 998 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
999 | #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw |
1000 | use strict; | |
1001 | BEGIN { $ENV{PATH} = "/usr/bin:/bin" } | |
1002 | use Socket; | |
1003 | use Carp; | |
1004 | my $EOL = "\015\012"; | |
a0d0e21e | 1005 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1006 | sub spawn; # forward declaration |
1007 | sub logmsg { print "$0 $$: @_ at ", scalar localtime(), "\n" } | |
a0d0e21e | 1008 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1009 | my $port = shift || 2345; |
1010 | die "invalid port" unless $port =~ /^ \d+ $/x; | |
51ee6500 | 1011 | |
e46aa1dd | 1012 | my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp"); |
54310121 | 1013 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1014 | socket(Server, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!"; |
1015 | setsockopt(Server, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR, pack("l", 1)) | |
1016 | || die "setsockopt: $!"; | |
1017 | bind(Server, sockaddr_in($port, INADDR_ANY)) || die "bind: $!"; | |
1018 | listen(Server, SOMAXCONN) || die "listen: $!"; | |
a0d0e21e | 1019 | |
e46aa1dd | 1020 | logmsg "server started on port $port"; |
a0d0e21e | 1021 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1022 | my $waitedpid = 0; |
1023 | my $paddr; | |
c5ae6365 | 1024 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1025 | use POSIX ":sys_wait_h"; |
1026 | use Errno; | |
c5ae6365 | 1027 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1028 | sub REAPER { |
1029 | local $!; # don't let waitpid() overwrite current error | |
1030 | while ((my $pid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0 && WIFEXITED($?)) { | |
1031 | logmsg "reaped $waitedpid" . ($? ? " with exit $?" : ""); | |
1032 | } | |
1033 | $SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER; # loathe SysV | |
1034 | } | |
c5ae6365 | 1035 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1036 | $SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER; |
1037 | ||
1038 | while (1) { | |
1039 | $paddr = accept(Client, Server) || do { | |
1040 | # try again if accept() returned because got a signal | |
1041 | next if $!{EINTR}; | |
1042 | die "accept: $!"; | |
1043 | }; | |
1044 | my ($port, $iaddr) = sockaddr_in($paddr); | |
1045 | my $name = gethostbyaddr($iaddr, AF_INET); | |
1046 | ||
1047 | logmsg "connection from $name [", | |
1048 | inet_ntoa($iaddr), | |
1049 | "] at port $port"; | |
1050 | ||
1051 | spawn sub { | |
1052 | $| = 1; | |
1053 | print "Hello there, $name, it's now ", | |
1054 | scalar localtime(), | |
1055 | $EOL; | |
1056 | exec "/usr/games/fortune" # XXX: "wrong" line terminators | |
1057 | or confess "can't exec fortune: $!"; | |
1058 | }; | |
1059 | close Client; | |
1060 | } | |
a0d0e21e | 1061 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1062 | sub spawn { |
1063 | my $coderef = shift; | |
c5ae6365 | 1064 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1065 | unless (@_ == 0 && $coderef && ref($coderef) eq "CODE") { |
1066 | confess "usage: spawn CODEREF"; | |
1067 | } | |
c5ae6365 | 1068 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1069 | my $pid; |
1070 | unless (defined($pid = fork())) { | |
1071 | logmsg "cannot fork: $!"; | |
1072 | return; | |
1073 | } | |
1074 | elsif ($pid) { | |
1075 | logmsg "begat $pid"; | |
1076 | return; # I'm the parent | |
1077 | } | |
1078 | # else I'm the child -- go spawn | |
c5ae6365 | 1079 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1080 | open(STDIN, "<&Client") || die "can't dup client to stdin"; |
1081 | open(STDOUT, ">&Client") || die "can't dup client to stdout"; | |
1082 | ## open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT") || die "can't dup stdout to stderr"; | |
1083 | exit($coderef->()); | |
1084 | } | |
4633a7c4 | 1085 | |
c5ae6365 AW |
1086 | This server takes the trouble to clone off a child version via fork() |
1087 | for each incoming request. That way it can handle many requests at | |
1088 | once, which you might not always want. Even if you don't fork(), the | |
1089 | listen() will allow that many pending connections. Forking servers | |
1090 | have to be particularly careful about cleaning up their dead children | |
1091 | (called "zombies" in Unix parlance), because otherwise you'll quickly | |
1092 | fill up your process table. The REAPER subroutine is used here to | |
1093 | call waitpid() for any child processes that have finished, thereby | |
1094 | ensuring that they terminate cleanly and don't join the ranks of the | |
1095 | living dead. | |
1096 | ||
1097 | Within the while loop we call accept() and check to see if it returns | |
cf21866a TC |
1098 | a false value. This would normally indicate a system error needs |
1099 | to be reported. However, the introduction of safe signals (see | |
e6aa8b84 | 1100 | L</Deferred Signals (Safe Signals)> above) in Perl 5.8.0 means that |
cf21866a TC |
1101 | accept() might also be interrupted when the process receives a signal. |
1102 | This typically happens when one of the forked subprocesses exits and | |
82f82fdb | 1103 | notifies the parent process with a CHLD signal. |
c5ae6365 | 1104 | |
cf21866a TC |
1105 | If accept() is interrupted by a signal, $! will be set to EINTR. |
1106 | If this happens, we can safely continue to the next iteration of | |
c5ae6365 | 1107 | the loop and another call to accept(). It is important that your |
82f82fdb | 1108 | signal handling code not modify the value of $!, or else this test |
cf21866a TC |
1109 | will likely fail. In the REAPER subroutine we create a local version |
1110 | of $! before calling waitpid(). When waitpid() sets $! to ECHILD as | |
82f82fdb | 1111 | it inevitably does when it has no more children waiting, it |
cf21866a | 1112 | updates the local copy and leaves the original unchanged. |
4633a7c4 | 1113 | |
cf21866a | 1114 | You should use the B<-T> flag to enable taint checking (see L<perlsec>) |
4633a7c4 | 1115 | even if we aren't running setuid or setgid. This is always a good idea |
cf21866a | 1116 | for servers or any program run on behalf of someone else (like CGI |
4633a7c4 LW |
1117 | scripts), because it lessens the chances that people from the outside will |
1118 | be able to compromise your system. | |
1119 | ||
1120 | Let's look at another TCP client. This one connects to the TCP "time" | |
1121 | service on a number of different machines and shows how far their clocks | |
1122 | differ from the system on which it's being run: | |
1123 | ||
1124 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1125 | use strict; |
1126 | use Socket; | |
1127 | ||
cf21866a TC |
1128 | my $SECS_OF_70_YEARS = 2208988800; |
1129 | sub ctime { scalar localtime(shift() || time()) } | |
4633a7c4 | 1130 | |
cf21866a TC |
1131 | my $iaddr = gethostbyname("localhost"); |
1132 | my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp"); | |
1133 | my $port = getservbyname("time", "tcp"); | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1134 | my $paddr = sockaddr_in(0, $iaddr); |
1135 | my($host); | |
1136 | ||
1137 | $| = 1; | |
cf21866a | 1138 | printf "%-24s %8s %s\n", "localhost", 0, ctime(); |
4633a7c4 LW |
1139 | |
1140 | foreach $host (@ARGV) { | |
322c2516 SF |
1141 | printf "%-24s ", $host; |
1142 | my $hisiaddr = inet_aton($host) || die "unknown host"; | |
1143 | my $hispaddr = sockaddr_in($port, $hisiaddr); | |
82f82fdb | 1144 | socket(SOCKET, PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, $proto) |
cf21866a | 1145 | || die "socket: $!"; |
322c2516 | 1146 | connect(SOCKET, $hispaddr) || die "connect: $!"; |
cf21866a | 1147 | my $rtime = pack("C4", ()); |
322c2516 SF |
1148 | read(SOCKET, $rtime, 4); |
1149 | close(SOCKET); | |
cf21866a TC |
1150 | my $histime = unpack("N", $rtime) - $SECS_OF_70_YEARS; |
1151 | printf "%8d %s\n", $histime - time(), ctime($histime); | |
a0d0e21e LW |
1152 | } |
1153 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
1154 | =head2 Unix-Domain TCP Clients and Servers |
1155 | ||
a2eb9003 | 1156 | That's fine for Internet-domain clients and servers, but what about local |
4633a7c4 LW |
1157 | communications? While you can use the same setup, sometimes you don't |
1158 | want to. Unix-domain sockets are local to the current host, and are often | |
54310121 | 1159 | used internally to implement pipes. Unlike Internet domain sockets, Unix |
4633a7c4 LW |
1160 | domain sockets can show up in the file system with an ls(1) listing. |
1161 | ||
5a964f20 | 1162 | % ls -l /dev/log |
4633a7c4 | 1163 | srw-rw-rw- 1 root 0 Oct 31 07:23 /dev/log |
a0d0e21e | 1164 | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1165 | You can test for these with Perl's B<-S> file test: |
1166 | ||
cf21866a | 1167 | unless (-S "/dev/log") { |
322c2516 | 1168 | die "something's wicked with the log system"; |
54310121 | 1169 | } |
4633a7c4 LW |
1170 | |
1171 | Here's a sample Unix-domain client: | |
1172 | ||
1173 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1174 | use Socket; |
1175 | use strict; | |
1176 | my ($rendezvous, $line); | |
1177 | ||
cf21866a | 1178 | $rendezvous = shift || "catsock"; |
322c2516 SF |
1179 | socket(SOCK, PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0) || die "socket: $!"; |
1180 | connect(SOCK, sockaddr_un($rendezvous)) || die "connect: $!"; | |
54310121 | 1181 | while (defined($line = <SOCK>)) { |
322c2516 | 1182 | print $line; |
54310121 | 1183 | } |
cf21866a | 1184 | exit(0); |
4633a7c4 | 1185 | |
5a964f20 TC |
1186 | And here's a corresponding server. You don't have to worry about silly |
1187 | network terminators here because Unix domain sockets are guaranteed | |
1188 | to be on the localhost, and thus everything works right. | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1189 | |
1190 | #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1191 | use strict; |
1192 | use Socket; | |
1193 | use Carp; | |
1194 | ||
cf21866a | 1195 | BEGIN { $ENV{PATH} = "/usr/bin:/bin" } |
5865a7df | 1196 | sub spawn; # forward declaration |
cf21866a | 1197 | sub logmsg { print "$0 $$: @_ at ", scalar localtime(), "\n" } |
4633a7c4 | 1198 | |
cf21866a | 1199 | my $NAME = "catsock"; |
4633a7c4 | 1200 | my $uaddr = sockaddr_un($NAME); |
cf21866a | 1201 | my $proto = getprotobyname("tcp"); |
4633a7c4 | 1202 | |
cf21866a | 1203 | socket(Server, PF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0) || die "socket: $!"; |
4633a7c4 | 1204 | unlink($NAME); |
322c2516 | 1205 | bind (Server, $uaddr) || die "bind: $!"; |
cf21866a | 1206 | listen(Server, SOMAXCONN) || die "listen: $!"; |
4633a7c4 LW |
1207 | |
1208 | logmsg "server started on $NAME"; | |
1209 | ||
5a964f20 TC |
1210 | my $waitedpid; |
1211 | ||
816229cf | 1212 | use POSIX ":sys_wait_h"; |
5a964f20 | 1213 | sub REAPER { |
322c2516 | 1214 | my $child; |
cf21866a TC |
1215 | while (($waitedpid = waitpid(-1, WNOHANG)) > 0) { |
1216 | logmsg "reaped $waitedpid" . ($? ? " with exit $?" : ""); | |
322c2516 SF |
1217 | } |
1218 | $SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER; # loathe SysV | |
5a964f20 TC |
1219 | } |
1220 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
1221 | $SIG{CHLD} = \&REAPER; |
1222 | ||
5a964f20 | 1223 | |
54310121 | 1224 | for ( $waitedpid = 0; |
cf21866a | 1225 | accept(Client, Server) || $waitedpid; |
322c2516 | 1226 | $waitedpid = 0, close Client) |
4633a7c4 | 1227 | { |
322c2516 SF |
1228 | next if $waitedpid; |
1229 | logmsg "connection on $NAME"; | |
1230 | spawn sub { | |
cf21866a TC |
1231 | print "Hello there, it's now ", scalar localtime(), "\n"; |
1232 | exec("/usr/games/fortune") || die "can't exec fortune: $!"; | |
322c2516 | 1233 | }; |
54310121 | 1234 | } |
4633a7c4 | 1235 | |
5865a7df | 1236 | sub spawn { |
cf21866a | 1237 | my $coderef = shift(); |
322c2516 | 1238 | |
cf21866a | 1239 | unless (@_ == 0 && $coderef && ref($coderef) eq "CODE") { |
322c2516 SF |
1240 | confess "usage: spawn CODEREF"; |
1241 | } | |
1242 | ||
1243 | my $pid; | |
cf21866a | 1244 | unless (defined($pid = fork())) { |
322c2516 SF |
1245 | logmsg "cannot fork: $!"; |
1246 | return; | |
82f82fdb | 1247 | } |
cf21866a | 1248 | elsif ($pid) { |
322c2516 SF |
1249 | logmsg "begat $pid"; |
1250 | return; # I'm the parent | |
82f82fdb | 1251 | } |
cf21866a TC |
1252 | else { |
1253 | # I'm the child -- go spawn | |
322c2516 | 1254 | } |
322c2516 | 1255 | |
cf21866a TC |
1256 | open(STDIN, "<&Client") || die "can't dup client to stdin"; |
1257 | open(STDOUT, ">&Client") || die "can't dup client to stdout"; | |
322c2516 | 1258 | ## open(STDERR, ">&STDOUT") || die "can't dup stdout to stderr"; |
cf21866a | 1259 | exit($coderef->()); |
5865a7df NC |
1260 | } |
1261 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
1262 | As you see, it's remarkably similar to the Internet domain TCP server, so |
1263 | much so, in fact, that we've omitted several duplicate functions--spawn(), | |
cf21866a | 1264 | logmsg(), ctime(), and REAPER()--which are the same as in the other server. |
4633a7c4 LW |
1265 | |
1266 | So why would you ever want to use a Unix domain socket instead of a | |
1267 | simpler named pipe? Because a named pipe doesn't give you sessions. You | |
1268 | can't tell one process's data from another's. With socket programming, | |
cf21866a | 1269 | you get a separate session for each client; that's why accept() takes two |
4633a7c4 LW |
1270 | arguments. |
1271 | ||
cf21866a TC |
1272 | For example, let's say that you have a long-running database server daemon |
1273 | that you want folks to be able to access from the Web, but only | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1274 | if they go through a CGI interface. You'd have a small, simple CGI |
1275 | program that does whatever checks and logging you feel like, and then acts | |
1276 | as a Unix-domain client and connects to your private server. | |
1277 | ||
7b05b7e3 TC |
1278 | =head1 TCP Clients with IO::Socket |
1279 | ||
1280 | For those preferring a higher-level interface to socket programming, the | |
e6aa8b84 BF |
1281 | IO::Socket module provides an object-oriented approach. If for some reason |
1282 | you lack this module, you can just fetch IO::Socket from CPAN, where you'll also | |
cf21866a TC |
1283 | find modules providing easy interfaces to the following systems: DNS, FTP, |
1284 | Ident (RFC 931), NIS and NISPlus, NNTP, Ping, POP3, SMTP, SNMP, SSLeay, | |
1285 | Telnet, and Time--to name just a few. | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1286 | |
1287 | =head2 A Simple Client | |
1288 | ||
1289 | Here's a client that creates a TCP connection to the "daytime" | |
1290 | service at port 13 of the host name "localhost" and prints out everything | |
1291 | that the server there cares to provide. | |
1292 | ||
1293 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w | |
1294 | use IO::Socket; | |
1295 | $remote = IO::Socket::INET->new( | |
322c2516 SF |
1296 | Proto => "tcp", |
1297 | PeerAddr => "localhost", | |
1298 | PeerPort => "daytime(13)", | |
1299 | ) | |
e46aa1dd | 1300 | || die "can't connect to daytime service on localhost"; |
cf21866a | 1301 | while (<$remote>) { print } |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1302 | |
1303 | When you run this program, you should get something back that | |
1304 | looks like this: | |
1305 | ||
1306 | Wed May 14 08:40:46 MDT 1997 | |
1307 | ||
cf21866a | 1308 | Here are what those parameters to the new() constructor mean: |
7b05b7e3 | 1309 | |
13a2d996 | 1310 | =over 4 |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1311 | |
1312 | =item C<Proto> | |
1313 | ||
1314 | This is which protocol to use. In this case, the socket handle returned | |
1315 | will be connected to a TCP socket, because we want a stream-oriented | |
1316 | connection, that is, one that acts pretty much like a plain old file. | |
1317 | Not all sockets are this of this type. For example, the UDP protocol | |
1318 | can be used to make a datagram socket, used for message-passing. | |
1319 | ||
1320 | =item C<PeerAddr> | |
1321 | ||
1322 | This is the name or Internet address of the remote host the server is | |
1323 | running on. We could have specified a longer name like C<"www.perl.com">, | |
cf21866a | 1324 | or an address like C<"207.171.7.72">. For demonstration purposes, we've |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1325 | used the special hostname C<"localhost">, which should always mean the |
1326 | current machine you're running on. The corresponding Internet address | |
cf21866a | 1327 | for localhost is C<"127.0.0.1">, if you'd rather use that. |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1328 | |
1329 | =item C<PeerPort> | |
1330 | ||
1331 | This is the service name or port number we'd like to connect to. | |
1332 | We could have gotten away with using just C<"daytime"> on systems with a | |
1333 | well-configured system services file,[FOOTNOTE: The system services file | |
cf21866a TC |
1334 | is found in I</etc/services> under Unixy systems.] but here we've specified the |
1335 | port number (13) in parentheses. Using just the number would have also | |
1336 | worked, but numeric literals make careful programmers nervous. | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1337 | |
1338 | =back | |
1339 | ||
1340 | Notice how the return value from the C<new> constructor is used as | |
cf21866a TC |
1341 | a filehandle in the C<while> loop? That's what's called an I<indirect |
1342 | filehandle>, a scalar variable containing a filehandle. You can use | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1343 | it the same way you would a normal filehandle. For example, you |
1344 | can read one line from it this way: | |
1345 | ||
1346 | $line = <$handle>; | |
1347 | ||
1348 | all remaining lines from is this way: | |
1349 | ||
1350 | @lines = <$handle>; | |
1351 | ||
1352 | and send a line of data to it this way: | |
1353 | ||
1354 | print $handle "some data\n"; | |
1355 | ||
1356 | =head2 A Webget Client | |
1357 | ||
1358 | Here's a simple client that takes a remote host to fetch a document | |
cf21866a | 1359 | from, and then a list of files to get from that host. This is a |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1360 | more interesting client than the previous one because it first sends |
1361 | something to the server before fetching the server's response. | |
1362 | ||
1363 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w | |
1364 | use IO::Socket; | |
cf21866a | 1365 | unless (@ARGV > 1) { die "usage: $0 host url ..." } |
7b05b7e3 | 1366 | $host = shift(@ARGV); |
5a964f20 TC |
1367 | $EOL = "\015\012"; |
1368 | $BLANK = $EOL x 2; | |
cf21866a | 1369 | for my $document (@ARGV) { |
322c2516 SF |
1370 | $remote = IO::Socket::INET->new( Proto => "tcp", |
1371 | PeerAddr => $host, | |
1372 | PeerPort => "http(80)", | |
cf21866a | 1373 | ) || die "cannot connect to httpd on $host"; |
322c2516 SF |
1374 | $remote->autoflush(1); |
1375 | print $remote "GET $document HTTP/1.0" . $BLANK; | |
1376 | while ( <$remote> ) { print } | |
1377 | close $remote; | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1378 | } |
1379 | ||
cf21866a TC |
1380 | The web server handling the HTTP service is assumed to be at |
1381 | its standard port, number 80. If the server you're trying to | |
1382 | connect to is at a different port, like 1080 or 8080, you should specify it | |
c47ff5f1 | 1383 | as the named-parameter pair, C<< PeerPort => 8080 >>. The C<autoflush> |
7b05b7e3 | 1384 | method is used on the socket because otherwise the system would buffer |
cf21866a TC |
1385 | up the output we sent it. (If you're on a prehistoric Mac, you'll also |
1386 | need to change every C<"\n"> in your code that sends data over the network | |
1387 | to be a C<"\015\012"> instead.) | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1388 | |
1389 | Connecting to the server is only the first part of the process: once you | |
1390 | have the connection, you have to use the server's language. Each server | |
1391 | on the network has its own little command language that it expects as | |
1392 | input. The string that we send to the server starting with "GET" is in | |
1393 | HTTP syntax. In this case, we simply request each specified document. | |
1394 | Yes, we really are making a new connection for each document, even though | |
1395 | it's the same host. That's the way you always used to have to speak HTTP. | |
1396 | Recent versions of web browsers may request that the remote server leave | |
1397 | the connection open a little while, but the server doesn't have to honor | |
1398 | such a request. | |
1399 | ||
1400 | Here's an example of running that program, which we'll call I<webget>: | |
1401 | ||
5a964f20 | 1402 | % webget www.perl.com /guanaco.html |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1403 | HTTP/1.1 404 File Not Found |
1404 | Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 18:02:32 GMT | |
1405 | Server: Apache/1.2b6 | |
1406 | Connection: close | |
1407 | Content-type: text/html | |
1408 | ||
1409 | <HEAD><TITLE>404 File Not Found</TITLE></HEAD> | |
1410 | <BODY><H1>File Not Found</H1> | |
1411 | The requested URL /guanaco.html was not found on this server.<P> | |
1412 | </BODY> | |
1413 | ||
1414 | Ok, so that's not very interesting, because it didn't find that | |
1415 | particular document. But a long response wouldn't have fit on this page. | |
1416 | ||
cf21866a | 1417 | For a more featureful version of this program, you should look to |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1418 | the I<lwp-request> program included with the LWP modules from CPAN. |
1419 | ||
1420 | =head2 Interactive Client with IO::Socket | |
1421 | ||
1422 | Well, that's all fine if you want to send one command and get one answer, | |
1423 | but what about setting up something fully interactive, somewhat like | |
1424 | the way I<telnet> works? That way you can type a line, get the answer, | |
1425 | type a line, get the answer, etc. | |
1426 | ||
1427 | This client is more complicated than the two we've done so far, but if | |
1428 | you're on a system that supports the powerful C<fork> call, the solution | |
1429 | isn't that rough. Once you've made the connection to whatever service | |
1430 | you'd like to chat with, call C<fork> to clone your process. Each of | |
1431 | these two identical process has a very simple job to do: the parent | |
1432 | copies everything from the socket to standard output, while the child | |
1433 | simultaneously copies everything from standard input to the socket. | |
1434 | To accomplish the same thing using just one process would be I<much> | |
1435 | harder, because it's easier to code two processes to do one thing than it | |
1436 | is to code one process to do two things. (This keep-it-simple principle | |
5a964f20 TC |
1437 | a cornerstones of the Unix philosophy, and good software engineering as |
1438 | well, which is probably why it's spread to other systems.) | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1439 | |
1440 | Here's the code: | |
1441 | ||
1442 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w | |
1443 | use strict; | |
1444 | use IO::Socket; | |
1445 | my ($host, $port, $kidpid, $handle, $line); | |
1446 | ||
1447 | unless (@ARGV == 2) { die "usage: $0 host port" } | |
1448 | ($host, $port) = @ARGV; | |
1449 | ||
1450 | # create a tcp connection to the specified host and port | |
1451 | $handle = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto => "tcp", | |
322c2516 SF |
1452 | PeerAddr => $host, |
1453 | PeerPort => $port) | |
cf21866a | 1454 | || die "can't connect to port $port on $host: $!"; |
7b05b7e3 | 1455 | |
cf21866a | 1456 | $handle->autoflush(1); # so output gets there right away |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1457 | print STDERR "[Connected to $host:$port]\n"; |
1458 | ||
1459 | # split the program into two processes, identical twins | |
1460 | die "can't fork: $!" unless defined($kidpid = fork()); | |
1461 | ||
1462 | # the if{} block runs only in the parent process | |
1463 | if ($kidpid) { | |
322c2516 SF |
1464 | # copy the socket to standard output |
1465 | while (defined ($line = <$handle>)) { | |
1466 | print STDOUT $line; | |
1467 | } | |
cf21866a | 1468 | kill("TERM", $kidpid); # send SIGTERM to child |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1469 | } |
1470 | # the else{} block runs only in the child process | |
1471 | else { | |
322c2516 SF |
1472 | # copy standard input to the socket |
1473 | while (defined ($line = <STDIN>)) { | |
1474 | print $handle $line; | |
1475 | } | |
cf21866a | 1476 | exit(0); # just in case |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1477 | } |
1478 | ||
1479 | The C<kill> function in the parent's C<if> block is there to send a | |
cf21866a | 1480 | signal to our child process, currently running in the C<else> block, |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1481 | as soon as the remote server has closed its end of the connection. |
1482 | ||
7b05b7e3 TC |
1483 | If the remote server sends data a byte at time, and you need that |
1484 | data immediately without waiting for a newline (which might not happen), | |
1485 | you may wish to replace the C<while> loop in the parent with the | |
1486 | following: | |
1487 | ||
1488 | my $byte; | |
1489 | while (sysread($handle, $byte, 1) == 1) { | |
322c2516 | 1490 | print STDOUT $byte; |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1491 | } |
1492 | ||
1493 | Making a system call for each byte you want to read is not very efficient | |
1494 | (to put it mildly) but is the simplest to explain and works reasonably | |
1495 | well. | |
1496 | ||
1497 | =head1 TCP Servers with IO::Socket | |
1498 | ||
5a964f20 | 1499 | As always, setting up a server is little bit more involved than running a client. |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1500 | The model is that the server creates a special kind of socket that |
1501 | does nothing but listen on a particular port for incoming connections. | |
c47ff5f1 | 1502 | It does this by calling the C<< IO::Socket::INET->new() >> method with |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1503 | slightly different arguments than the client did. |
1504 | ||
13a2d996 | 1505 | =over 4 |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1506 | |
1507 | =item Proto | |
1508 | ||
1509 | This is which protocol to use. Like our clients, we'll | |
1510 | still specify C<"tcp"> here. | |
1511 | ||
1512 | =item LocalPort | |
1513 | ||
1514 | We specify a local | |
1515 | port in the C<LocalPort> argument, which we didn't do for the client. | |
1516 | This is service name or port number for which you want to be the | |
1517 | server. (Under Unix, ports under 1024 are restricted to the | |
1518 | superuser.) In our sample, we'll use port 9000, but you can use | |
1519 | any port that's not currently in use on your system. If you try | |
1520 | to use one already in used, you'll get an "Address already in use" | |
19799a22 | 1521 | message. Under Unix, the C<netstat -a> command will show |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1522 | which services current have servers. |
1523 | ||
1524 | =item Listen | |
1525 | ||
1526 | The C<Listen> parameter is set to the maximum number of | |
1527 | pending connections we can accept until we turn away incoming clients. | |
1528 | Think of it as a call-waiting queue for your telephone. | |
1529 | The low-level Socket module has a special symbol for the system maximum, which | |
1530 | is SOMAXCONN. | |
1531 | ||
1532 | =item Reuse | |
1533 | ||
1534 | The C<Reuse> parameter is needed so that we restart our server | |
1535 | manually without waiting a few minutes to allow system buffers to | |
1536 | clear out. | |
1537 | ||
1538 | =back | |
1539 | ||
1540 | Once the generic server socket has been created using the parameters | |
1541 | listed above, the server then waits for a new client to connect | |
d1be9408 JF |
1542 | to it. The server blocks in the C<accept> method, which eventually accepts a |
1543 | bidirectional connection from the remote client. (Make sure to autoflush | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1544 | this handle to circumvent buffering.) |
1545 | ||
1546 | To add to user-friendliness, our server prompts the user for commands. | |
1547 | Most servers don't do this. Because of the prompt without a newline, | |
1548 | you'll have to use the C<sysread> variant of the interactive client above. | |
1549 | ||
cf21866a TC |
1550 | This server accepts one of five different commands, sending output back to |
1551 | the client. Unlike most network servers, this one handles only one | |
5e220227 | 1552 | incoming client at a time. Multitasking servers are covered in |
faa783ac | 1553 | Chapter 16 of the Camel. |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1554 | |
1555 | Here's the code. We'll | |
1556 | ||
1557 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w | |
1558 | use IO::Socket; | |
cf21866a | 1559 | use Net::hostent; # for OOish version of gethostbyaddr |
7b05b7e3 | 1560 | |
322c2516 | 1561 | $PORT = 9000; # pick something not in use |
7b05b7e3 | 1562 | |
cf21866a | 1563 | $server = IO::Socket::INET->new( Proto => "tcp", |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1564 | LocalPort => $PORT, |
1565 | Listen => SOMAXCONN, | |
1566 | Reuse => 1); | |
1567 | ||
1568 | die "can't setup server" unless $server; | |
1569 | print "[Server $0 accepting clients]\n"; | |
1570 | ||
1571 | while ($client = $server->accept()) { | |
1572 | $client->autoflush(1); | |
1573 | print $client "Welcome to $0; type help for command list.\n"; | |
1574 | $hostinfo = gethostbyaddr($client->peeraddr); | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1575 | printf "[Connect from %s]\n", |
1576 | $hostinfo ? $hostinfo->name : $client->peerhost; | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1577 | print $client "Command? "; |
1578 | while ( <$client>) { | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1579 | next unless /\S/; # blank line |
1580 | if (/quit|exit/i) { last } | |
1581 | elsif (/date|time/i) { printf $client "%s\n", scalar localtime() } | |
1582 | elsif (/who/i ) { print $client `who 2>&1` } | |
1583 | elsif (/cookie/i ) { print $client `/usr/games/fortune 2>&1` } | |
1584 | elsif (/motd/i ) { print $client `cat /etc/motd 2>&1` } | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1585 | else { |
1586 | print $client "Commands: quit date who cookie motd\n"; | |
1587 | } | |
1588 | } continue { | |
1589 | print $client "Command? "; | |
1590 | } | |
1591 | close $client; | |
1592 | } | |
1593 | ||
1594 | =head1 UDP: Message Passing | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1595 | |
1596 | Another kind of client-server setup is one that uses not connections, but | |
1597 | messages. UDP communications involve much lower overhead but also provide | |
1598 | less reliability, as there are no promises that messages will arrive at | |
1599 | all, let alone in order and unmangled. Still, UDP offers some advantages | |
1600 | over TCP, including being able to "broadcast" or "multicast" to a whole | |
1601 | bunch of destination hosts at once (usually on your local subnet). If you | |
1602 | find yourself overly concerned about reliability and start building checks | |
6a3992aa | 1603 | into your message system, then you probably should use just TCP to start |
4633a7c4 LW |
1604 | with. |
1605 | ||
cf21866a TC |
1606 | UDP datagrams are I<not> a bytestream and should not be treated as such. |
1607 | This makes using I/O mechanisms with internal buffering like stdio (i.e. | |
1608 | print() and friends) especially cumbersome. Use syswrite(), or better | |
1609 | send(), like in the example below. | |
90034919 | 1610 | |
4633a7c4 | 1611 | Here's a UDP program similar to the sample Internet TCP client given |
7b05b7e3 | 1612 | earlier. However, instead of checking one host at a time, the UDP version |
4633a7c4 LW |
1613 | will check many of them asynchronously by simulating a multicast and then |
1614 | using select() to do a timed-out wait for I/O. To do something similar | |
1615 | with TCP, you'd have to use a different socket handle for each host. | |
1616 | ||
e46aa1dd KW |
1617 | #!/usr/bin/perl -w |
1618 | use strict; | |
1619 | use Socket; | |
1620 | use Sys::Hostname; | |
1621 | ||
1622 | my ( $count, $hisiaddr, $hispaddr, $histime, | |
1623 | $host, $iaddr, $paddr, $port, $proto, | |
1624 | $rin, $rout, $rtime, $SECS_OF_70_YEARS); | |
1625 | ||
1626 | $SECS_OF_70_YEARS = 2_208_988_800; | |
1627 | ||
1628 | $iaddr = gethostbyname(hostname()); | |
1629 | $proto = getprotobyname("udp"); | |
1630 | $port = getservbyname("time", "udp"); | |
1631 | $paddr = sockaddr_in(0, $iaddr); # 0 means let kernel pick | |
1632 | ||
1633 | socket(SOCKET, PF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, $proto) || die "socket: $!"; | |
1634 | bind(SOCKET, $paddr) || die "bind: $!"; | |
1635 | ||
1636 | $| = 1; | |
1637 | printf "%-12s %8s %s\n", "localhost", 0, scalar localtime(); | |
1638 | $count = 0; | |
1639 | for $host (@ARGV) { | |
1640 | $count++; | |
1641 | $hisiaddr = inet_aton($host) || die "unknown host"; | |
1642 | $hispaddr = sockaddr_in($port, $hisiaddr); | |
1643 | defined(send(SOCKET, 0, 0, $hispaddr)) || die "send $host: $!"; | |
1644 | } | |
4633a7c4 | 1645 | |
e46aa1dd KW |
1646 | $rin = ""; |
1647 | vec($rin, fileno(SOCKET), 1) = 1; | |
1648 | ||
1649 | # timeout after 10.0 seconds | |
1650 | while ($count && select($rout = $rin, undef, undef, 10.0)) { | |
1651 | $rtime = ""; | |
1652 | $hispaddr = recv(SOCKET, $rtime, 4, 0) || die "recv: $!"; | |
1653 | ($port, $hisiaddr) = sockaddr_in($hispaddr); | |
1654 | $host = gethostbyaddr($hisiaddr, AF_INET); | |
1655 | $histime = unpack("N", $rtime) - $SECS_OF_70_YEARS; | |
1656 | printf "%-12s ", $host; | |
1657 | printf "%8d %s\n", $histime - time(), scalar localtime($histime); | |
1658 | $count--; | |
1659 | } | |
4633a7c4 | 1660 | |
cf21866a TC |
1661 | This example does not include any retries and may consequently fail to |
1662 | contact a reachable host. The most prominent reason for this is congestion | |
1663 | of the queues on the sending host if the number of hosts to contact is | |
1664 | sufficiently large. | |
90034919 | 1665 | |
4633a7c4 LW |
1666 | =head1 SysV IPC |
1667 | ||
1668 | While System V IPC isn't so widely used as sockets, it still has some | |
cf21866a TC |
1669 | interesting uses. However, you cannot use SysV IPC or Berkeley mmap() to |
1670 | have a variable shared amongst several processes. That's because Perl | |
1671 | would reallocate your string when you weren't wanting it to. You might | |
1672 | look into the C<IPC::Shareable> or C<threads::shared> modules for that. | |
4633a7c4 | 1673 | |
54310121 | 1674 | Here's a small example showing shared memory usage. |
a0d0e21e | 1675 | |
7b34eba2 | 1676 | use IPC::SysV qw(IPC_PRIVATE IPC_RMID S_IRUSR S_IWUSR); |
0ade1984 | 1677 | |
a0d0e21e | 1678 | $size = 2000; |
cf21866a TC |
1679 | $id = shmget(IPC_PRIVATE, $size, S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR); |
1680 | defined($id) || die "shmget: $!"; | |
41d6edb2 | 1681 | print "shm key $id\n"; |
a0d0e21e LW |
1682 | |
1683 | $message = "Message #1"; | |
cf21866a | 1684 | shmwrite($id, $message, 0, 60) || die "shmwrite: $!"; |
0ade1984 | 1685 | print "wrote: '$message'\n"; |
cf21866a | 1686 | shmread($id, $buff, 0, 60) || die "shmread: $!"; |
0ade1984 | 1687 | print "read : '$buff'\n"; |
a0d0e21e | 1688 | |
0ade1984 | 1689 | # the buffer of shmread is zero-character end-padded. |
b18b5ffd | 1690 | substr($buff, index($buff, "\0")) = ""; |
0ade1984 JH |
1691 | print "un" unless $buff eq $message; |
1692 | print "swell\n"; | |
a0d0e21e | 1693 | |
41d6edb2 | 1694 | print "deleting shm $id\n"; |
cf21866a | 1695 | shmctl($id, IPC_RMID, 0) || die "shmctl: $!"; |
a0d0e21e LW |
1696 | |
1697 | Here's an example of a semaphore: | |
1698 | ||
0ade1984 JH |
1699 | use IPC::SysV qw(IPC_CREAT); |
1700 | ||
a0d0e21e | 1701 | $IPC_KEY = 1234; |
cf21866a | 1702 | $id = semget($IPC_KEY, 10, 0666 | IPC_CREAT); |
3389bcf7 JL |
1703 | defined($id) || die "semget: $!"; |
1704 | print "sem id $id\n"; | |
a0d0e21e | 1705 | |
a2eb9003 | 1706 | Put this code in a separate file to be run in more than one process. |
a0d0e21e LW |
1707 | Call the file F<take>: |
1708 | ||
1709 | # create a semaphore | |
1710 | ||
1711 | $IPC_KEY = 1234; | |
cf21866a | 1712 | $id = semget($IPC_KEY, 0, 0); |
3389bcf7 | 1713 | defined($id) || die "semget: $!"; |
a0d0e21e | 1714 | |
cf21866a | 1715 | $semnum = 0; |
a0d0e21e LW |
1716 | $semflag = 0; |
1717 | ||
cf21866a | 1718 | # "take" semaphore |
a0d0e21e LW |
1719 | # wait for semaphore to be zero |
1720 | $semop = 0; | |
41d6edb2 | 1721 | $opstring1 = pack("s!s!s!", $semnum, $semop, $semflag); |
a0d0e21e LW |
1722 | |
1723 | # Increment the semaphore count | |
1724 | $semop = 1; | |
41d6edb2 | 1725 | $opstring2 = pack("s!s!s!", $semnum, $semop, $semflag); |
cf21866a | 1726 | $opstring = $opstring1 . $opstring2; |
a0d0e21e | 1727 | |
cf21866a | 1728 | semop($id, $opstring) || die "semop: $!"; |
a0d0e21e | 1729 | |
a2eb9003 | 1730 | Put this code in a separate file to be run in more than one process. |
a0d0e21e LW |
1731 | Call this file F<give>: |
1732 | ||
cf21866a | 1733 | # "give" the semaphore |
a0d0e21e LW |
1734 | # run this in the original process and you will see |
1735 | # that the second process continues | |
1736 | ||
1737 | $IPC_KEY = 1234; | |
41d6edb2 | 1738 | $id = semget($IPC_KEY, 0, 0); |
cf21866a | 1739 | die unless defined($id); |
a0d0e21e | 1740 | |
cf21866a | 1741 | $semnum = 0; |
a0d0e21e LW |
1742 | $semflag = 0; |
1743 | ||
1744 | # Decrement the semaphore count | |
1745 | $semop = -1; | |
41d6edb2 | 1746 | $opstring = pack("s!s!s!", $semnum, $semop, $semflag); |
a0d0e21e | 1747 | |
cf21866a | 1748 | semop($id, $opstring) || die "semop: $!"; |
a0d0e21e | 1749 | |
7b05b7e3 | 1750 | The SysV IPC code above was written long ago, and it's definitely |
e6aa8b84 | 1751 | clunky looking. For a more modern look, see the IPC::SysV module. |
4633a7c4 | 1752 | |
41d6edb2 JH |
1753 | A small example demonstrating SysV message queues: |
1754 | ||
7b34eba2 | 1755 | use IPC::SysV qw(IPC_PRIVATE IPC_RMID IPC_CREAT S_IRUSR S_IWUSR); |
41d6edb2 | 1756 | |
7b34eba2 | 1757 | my $id = msgget(IPC_PRIVATE, IPC_CREAT | S_IRUSR | S_IWUSR); |
cf21866a | 1758 | defined($id) || die "msgget failed: $!"; |
41d6edb2 | 1759 | |
cf21866a | 1760 | my $sent = "message"; |
e343e2e2 | 1761 | my $type_sent = 1234; |
cf21866a TC |
1762 | |
1763 | msgsnd($id, pack("l! a*", $type_sent, $sent), 0) | |
1764 | || die "msgsnd failed: $!"; | |
1765 | ||
1766 | msgrcv($id, my $rcvd_buf, 60, 0, 0) | |
1767 | || die "msgrcv failed: $!"; | |
1768 | ||
1769 | my($type_rcvd, $rcvd) = unpack("l! a*", $rcvd_buf); | |
1770 | ||
1771 | if ($rcvd eq $sent) { | |
1772 | print "okay\n"; | |
41d6edb2 | 1773 | } else { |
cf21866a | 1774 | print "not okay\n"; |
41d6edb2 JH |
1775 | } |
1776 | ||
cf21866a TC |
1777 | msgctl($id, IPC_RMID, 0) || die "msgctl failed: $!\n"; |
1778 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
1779 | =head1 NOTES |
1780 | ||
5a964f20 TC |
1781 | Most of these routines quietly but politely return C<undef> when they |
1782 | fail instead of causing your program to die right then and there due to | |
1783 | an uncaught exception. (Actually, some of the new I<Socket> conversion | |
cf21866a | 1784 | functions do croak() on bad arguments.) It is therefore essential to |
5a964f20 | 1785 | check return values from these functions. Always begin your socket |
cf21866a TC |
1786 | programs this way for optimal success, and don't forget to add the B<-T> |
1787 | taint-checking flag to the C<#!> line for servers: | |
4633a7c4 | 1788 | |
5a964f20 | 1789 | #!/usr/bin/perl -Tw |
4633a7c4 LW |
1790 | use strict; |
1791 | use sigtrap; | |
1792 | use Socket; | |
1793 | ||
1794 | =head1 BUGS | |
1795 | ||
cf21866a | 1796 | These routines all create system-specific portability problems. As noted |
4633a7c4 | 1797 | elsewhere, Perl is at the mercy of your C libraries for much of its system |
cf21866a | 1798 | behavior. It's probably safest to assume broken SysV semantics for |
6a3992aa | 1799 | signals and to stick with simple TCP and UDP socket operations; e.g., don't |
a2eb9003 | 1800 | try to pass open file descriptors over a local UDP datagram socket if you |
4633a7c4 LW |
1801 | want your code to stand a chance of being portable. |
1802 | ||
4633a7c4 LW |
1803 | =head1 AUTHOR |
1804 | ||
1805 | Tom Christiansen, with occasional vestiges of Larry Wall's original | |
7b05b7e3 | 1806 | version and suggestions from the Perl Porters. |
4633a7c4 LW |
1807 | |
1808 | =head1 SEE ALSO | |
1809 | ||
7b05b7e3 TC |
1810 | There's a lot more to networking than this, but this should get you |
1811 | started. | |
1812 | ||
cf21866a TC |
1813 | For intrepid programmers, the indispensable textbook is I<Unix Network |
1814 | Programming, 2nd Edition, Volume 1> by W. Richard Stevens (published by | |
1815 | Prentice-Hall). Most books on networking address the subject from the | |
1816 | perspective of a C programmer; translation to Perl is left as an exercise | |
1817 | for the reader. | |
7b05b7e3 TC |
1818 | |
1819 | The IO::Socket(3) manpage describes the object library, and the Socket(3) | |
1820 | manpage describes the low-level interface to sockets. Besides the obvious | |
cf21866a TC |
1821 | functions in L<perlfunc>, you should also check out the F<modules> file at |
1822 | your nearest CPAN site, especially | |
82f82fdb | 1823 | L<http://www.cpan.org/modules/00modlist.long.html#ID5_Networking_>. |
cf21866a | 1824 | See L<perlmodlib> or best yet, the F<Perl FAQ> for a description |
82f82fdb | 1825 | of what CPAN is and where to get it if the previous link doesn't work |
cf21866a TC |
1826 | for you. |
1827 | ||
1828 | Section 5 of CPAN's F<modules> file is devoted to "Networking, Device | |
1829 | Control (modems), and Interprocess Communication", and contains numerous | |
1830 | unbundled modules numerous networking modules, Chat and Expect operations, | |
1831 | CGI programming, DCE, FTP, IPC, NNTP, Proxy, Ptty, RPC, SNMP, SMTP, Telnet, | |
1832 | Threads, and ToolTalk--to name just a few. |