ADC Home > Reference Library > Reference > Mac OS X > Mac OS X Man Pages

 

This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

This manual page is associated with the Mac OS X developer tools. The software or headers described may not be present on your Mac OS X installation until you install the developer tools package. This package is available on your Mac OS X installation DVD, and the latest versions can be downloaded from developer.apple.com.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).



MKFIFO(2)                   BSD System Calls Manual                  MKFIFO(2)

NAME
     mkfifo -- make a fifo file

SYNOPSIS
     #include <sys/types.h>
     #include <sys/stat.h>

     int
     mkfifo(const char *path, mode_t mode);

DESCRIPTION
     Mkfifo() creates a new fifo file with name path.  The access permissions are specified by mode and
     restricted by the umask(2) of the calling process.

     The fifo's owner ID is set to the process's effective user ID.  The fifo's group ID is set to that of
     the parent directory in which it is created.

RETURN VALUES
     A 0 return value indicates success.  A -1 return value indicates an error, and an error code is stored
     in errno.

ERRORS
     Mkfifo() will fail and no fifo will be created if:

     [ENOTSUP]          The kernel has not been configured to support fifo's.

     [ENOTDIR]          A component of the path prefix is not a directory.

     [ENAMETOOLONG]     A component of a pathname exceeded {NAME_MAX} characters, or an entire path name
                        exceeded {PATH_MAX} characters.

     [ENOENT]           A component of the path prefix does not exist.

     [EACCES]           Search permission is denied for a component of the path prefix.

     [ELOOP]            Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the pathname.

     [EROFS]            The named file resides on a read-only file system.

     [EEXIST]           The named file exists.

     [ENOSPC]           The directory in which the entry for the new fifo is being placed cannot be extended
                        because there is no space left on the file system containing the directory.

     [ENOSPC]           There are no free inodes on the file system on which the fifo is being created.

     [EDQUOT]           The directory in which the entry for the new fifo is being placed cannot be extended
                        because the user's quota of disk blocks on the file system containing the directory
                        has been exhausted.

     [EDQUOT]           The user's quota of inodes on the file system on which the fifo is being created has
                        been exhausted.

     [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while making the directory entry or allocating the inode.

     [EIO]              An I/O error occurred while reading from or writing to the file system.

     [EFAULT]           Path points outside the process's allocated address space.

SEE ALSO
     chmod(2), stat(2), umask(2)

STANDARDS
     The mkfifo function call conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-1988 (``POSIX.1'').

BSD                              June 4, 1993                              BSD

Did this document help you?
Yes: Tell us what works for you.
It’s good, but: Report typos, inaccuracies, and so forth.
It wasn’t helpful: Tell us what would have helped.