I am writing a pretty simple script .
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
int main(){
int pipefd[2];
pid_t c;
int value[2];
c = fork();
if(c<0){
perror("in fork");
exit(1);
}
if(c==0){
printf("i am the child\n");
int buf[2];
buf[0]=3;
buf[1]=0;
write(pipefd[1], buf, 4);
write(pipefd[1],buf+1,4);
close(pipefd[1]);
exit(0);
}
if (pipe(pipefd) == -1) { /*UPDATE */
perror("pipe");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
read(pipefd[0], value, 4);
read(pipefd[0], value+1, 4);
close(pipefd[0]);
printf("%d %d\n", value[0], value[1]);
exit(0);
}
What I intend to do is to achieve:
value[0] = buf[0]; value[1] = buf[1];
( and print those of course).
But all I get as a result is :
-1299582208 32766
i am the child
Because, I have ints, I assumed that each will hold 4 bytes. And I think that for an int array each element will holds 4 bytes. But clearly I am missing something. Any help?
As I mentioned in my top comment: Where is the pipe syscall?
Without it, the write and read calls will probably fail because pipefd has random values.
So, the parent will never have value filled in correctly.
Because these [unitialized] values are on the stack, they will have random values, which is what you're seeing.
This is UB [undefined behavior].
Different systems/compilers may manipulate the stack differently, which is why you see different [yet still random] results on different configurations.
To fix, add the following above your fork call:
pipe(pipefd);
I downloaded, built, and ran your program. Before I added the fix, I got random values. After applying the fix, I get 3 0 as the output, which is what you expected/wanted.
Note: As others have mentioned, you could check the return codes for read and write. If you had, they might return -1 and put an error code in errno that would have helped you debug the issue.
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