pipe

Creates a pair of pipe endpoints (connected to each other) and returns them as a two-element array of IO objects: [ read_io, write_io ].

If a block is given, the block is called and returns the value of the block. read_io and write_io are sent to the block as arguments. If read_io and write_io are not closed when the block exits, they are closed. i.e. closing read_io and/or write_io doesn't cause an error.

Not available on all platforms.

If an encoding (encoding name or encoding object) is specified as an optional argument, read string from pipe is tagged with the encoding specified. If the argument is a colon separated two encoding names âA:Bâ, the read string is converted from encoding A (external encoding) to encoding B (internal encoding), then tagged with B. If two optional arguments are specified, those must be encoding objects or encoding names, and the first one is the external encoding, and the second one is the internal encoding. If the external encoding and the internal encoding is specified, optional hash argument specify the conversion option.

In the example below, the two processes close the ends of the pipe that they are not using. This is not just a cosmetic nicety. The read end of a pipe will not generate an end of file condition if there are any writers with the pipe still open. In the case of the parent process, the rd.read will never return if it does not first issue a wr.close.

rd, wr = IO.pipe

if fork
  wr.close
  puts "Parent got: <#{rd.read}>"
  rd.close
  Process.wait
else
  rd.close
  puts "Sending message to parent"
  wr.write "Hi Dad"
  wr.close
end

produces:

Sending message to parent
Parent got: <Hi Dad>