.\" Copyright (C) 2010-2022 Colin Watson.
.\"
.\" This file is part of libpipeline.
.\"
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.\" your option) any later version.
.\"
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.\" WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
.\" MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
.\" General Public License for more details.
.\"
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.Dd April 28, 2022
.Os GNU
.ds volume-operating-system GNU
.Dt LIBPIPELINE 3
.Sh NAME
.Nm libpipeline
.Nd pipeline manipulation library
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In pipeline.h
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm
is a C library for setting up and running pipelines of processes, without
needing to involve shell command-line parsing which is often error-prone and
insecure.
This relieves programmers of the need to laboriously construct pipelines
using lower-level primitives such as
.Ic fork
and
.Ic execve .
.Pp
The general way to use
.Nm
involves constructing a
.Vt pipeline
structure and adding one or more
.Vt pipecmd
structures to it.
A
.Vt pipecmd
represents a subprocess (or
.Dq command ) ,
while a
.Vt pipeline
represents a sequence of subprocesses each of whose outputs is connected to
the next one's input, as in the example
.Ic ls | grep pattern | less .
The calling program may adjust certain properties of each command
independently, such as its environment and
.Xr nice 3
priority, as well as properties of the entire pipeline such as its input and
output and the way signals are handled while executing it.
The calling program may then start the pipeline, read output from it, wait
for it to complete, and gather its exit status.
.Pp
Strings passed as
.Vt const char *
function arguments will be copied by the library.
.Ss Functions to build individual commands
.Bl -tag -width 4n -compact
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipecmd_new "const char *name"
.Pp
Construct a new command representing execution of a program called
.Va name .
.Pp
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipecmd_new_argv "const char *name" "va_list argv"
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipecmd_new_args "const char *name" ...
.Pp
Convenience constructors wrapping
.Fn pipecmd_new
and
.Fn pipecmd_arg .
Construct a new command representing execution of a program called
.Va name
with arguments.
Terminate arguments with
.Li NULL .
.Pp
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipecmd_new_argstr "const char *argstr"
.Pp
Split
.Va argstr
on whitespace to construct a command and arguments, honouring shell-style
single-quoting, double-quoting, and backslashes, but not other shell
evilness like wildcards, semicolons, or backquotes.
This is included only to support situations where command arguments are
encoded into configuration files and the like.
While it is safer than
.Xr system 3 ,
it still involves significant string parsing which is inherently riskier
than avoiding it altogether.
Please try to avoid using it in new code.
.Pp
.It Vt typedef void pipecmd_function_type (void *) ;
.It Vt typedef void pipecmd_function_free_type (void *) ;
.It Xo Ft "pipecmd *" Ns
.Fo pipecmd_new_function
.Fa "const char *name"
.Fa "pipecmd_function_type *func"
.Fa "pipecmd_function_free_type *free_func"
.Fa "void *data"
.Fc
.Xc
.Pp
Construct a new command that calls a given function rather than executing a
process.
.Pp
The data argument is passed as the function's only argument, and will be
freed before returning using free_func (if
.No non- Ns Va NULL Ns ).
.Pp
.Li pipecmd_*
functions that deal with arguments cannot be used with the command returned
by this function.
.Pp
.It Xo Ft "pipecmd *" Ns
.Fn pipecmd_new_sequencev "const char *name" "va_list cmdv"
.Xc
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipecmd_new_sequence "const char *name" ...
.Pp
Construct a new command that itself runs a sequence of commands, supplied as
.Vt "command *"
arguments following
.Va name
and terminated by
.Li NULL .
The commands will be executed in forked children; if any exits non-zero then
it will terminate the sequence, as with "&&" in shell.
.Pp
.Li pipecmd_*
functions that deal with arguments cannot be used with the command returned
by this function.
.Pp
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipecmd_new_passthrough void
.Pp
Return a new command that just passes data from its input to its output.
.Pp
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipecmd_dup "pipecmd *cmd"
.Pp
Return a duplicate of a command.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_arg "pipecmd *cmd" "const char *arg"
.Pp
Add an argument to a command.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_argf "pipecmd *cmd" "const char *format" ...
.Pp
Convenience function to add an argument with printf substitutions.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_argv "pipecmd *cmd" "va_list argv"
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_args "pipecmd *cmd" ...
.Pp
Convenience functions wrapping
.Fn pipecmd_arg
to add multiple arguments at once.
Terminate arguments with
.Li NULL .
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_argstr "pipecmd *cmd" "const char *argstr"
.Pp
Split
.Va argstr
on whitespace to add a list of arguments, honouring shell-style
single-quoting, double-quoting, and backslashes, but not other shell
evilness like wildcards, semicolons, or backquotes.
This is included only to support situations where command arguments are
encoded into configuration files and the like.
While it is safer than
.Xr system 3 ,
it still involves significant string parsing which is inherently riskier
than avoiding it altogether.
Please try to avoid using it in new code.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_get_nargs "pipecmd *cmd"
.Pp
Return the number of arguments to this command.
Note that this includes the command name as the first argument, so the
command
.Sq echo foo bar
is counted as having three arguments.
.Pp
Added in
.Nm
1.1.0.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_nice "pipecmd *cmd" "int value"
.Pp
Set the
.Xr nice 3
value for this command.
Defaults to 0.
Errors while attempting to set the nice value are ignored, aside from
emitting a debug message.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_discard_err "pipecmd *cmd" "int discard_err"
.Pp
If
.Va discard_err
is non-zero, redirect this command's standard error to
.Pa /dev/null .
Otherwise, and by default, pass it through.
This is usually a bad idea.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_chdir "pipecmd *cmd" "const char *directory"
.Pp
Change the working directory to
.Va directory
while running this command.
.Pp
Added in
.Nm
1.3.0.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_fchdir "pipecmd *cmd" "int directory_fd"
.Pp
Change the working directory to the directory given by the open file
descriptor
.Va directory_fd
while running this command.
.Pp
Added in
.Nm
1.4.0.
.Pp
.It Xo Ft void
.Fn pipecmd_setenv "pipecmd *cmd" "const char *name" "const char *value"
.Xc
.Pp
Set environment variable
.Va name
to
.Va value
while running this command.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_unsetenv "pipecmd *cmd" "const char *name"
.Pp
Unset environment variable
.Va name
while running this command.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_clearenv "pipecmd *cmd"
.Pp
Clear the environment while running this command.
(Note that environment operations work in sequence; pipecmd_clearenv
followed by pipecmd_setenv causes the command to have just a single
environment variable set.)
Beware that this may cause unexpected failures, for example if some of the
contents of the environment are necessary to execute programs at all (say,
.Li PATH ) .
.Pp
Added in
.Nm
1.1.0.
.Pp
.It Xo Ft void
.Fo pipecmd_pre_exec
.Fa "pipecmd *cmd"
.Fa "pipecmd_function_type *func"
.Fa "pipecmd_function_free_type *free_func"
.Fa "void *data"
.Fc
.Xc
.Pp
Install a pre-exec handler.
This will be run immediately before executing the command's payload (process
or function).
Pass NULL to clear any existing pre-exec handler.
The data argument is passed as the function's only argument, and will be
freed before returning using free_func (if non-NULL).
.Pp
This is similar to pipeline_install_post_fork, except that is specific to a
single command rather than installing a global handler, and it runs slightly
later (immediately before exec rather than immediately after fork).
.Pp
Added in
.Nm
1.5.0.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_sequence_command "pipecmd *cmd" "pipecmd *child"
.Pp
Add a command to a sequence created using
.Fn pipecmd_new_sequence .
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_dump "pipecmd *cmd" "FILE *stream"
.Pp
Dump a string representation of a command to stream.
.Pp
.It Ft "char *" Ns Fn pipecmd_tostring "pipecmd *cmd"
.Pp
Return a string representation of a command.
The caller should free the result.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_exec "pipecmd *cmd"
.Pp
Execute a single command, replacing the current process.
Never returns, instead exiting non-zero on failure.
.Pp
Added in
.Nm
1.1.0.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipecmd_free "pipecmd *cmd"
.Pp
Destroy a command.
Safely does nothing if
.Va cmd
is
.Li NULL .
.El
.Ss Functions to build pipelines
.Bl -tag -width 4n -compact
.It Ft "pipeline *" Ns Fn pipeline_new void
.Pp
Construct a new pipeline.
.Pp
.It Ft "pipeline *" Ns Fn pipeline_new_commandv "pipecmd *cmd1" "va_list cmdv"
.It Ft "pipeline *" Ns Fn pipeline_new_commands "pipecmd *cmd1" ...
.Pp
Convenience constructors wrapping
.Fn pipeline_new
and
.Fn pipeline_command .
Construct a new pipeline consisting of the given list of commands.
Terminate commands with
.Li NULL .
.Pp
.It Xo Ft "pipeline *" Ns
.Fn pipeline_new_command_argv "const char *name" "va_list argv"
.Xc
.It Ft "pipeline *" Ns Fn pipeline_new_command_args "const char *name" ...
.Pp
Construct a new pipeline and add a single command to it.
.Pp
.It Ft "pipeline *" Ns Fn pipeline_join "pipeline *p1" "pipeline *p2"
.Pp
Joins two pipelines, neither of which are allowed to be started.
Discards
.Fa want_out ,
.Fa want_outfile ,
and
.Fa outfd
from
.Va p1 ,
and
.Fa want_in ,
.Fa want_infile ,
and
.Fa infd
from
.Va p2 .
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_connect "pipeline *source" "pipeline *sink" ...
.Pp
Connect the input of one or more sink pipelines to the output of a source
pipeline.
The source pipeline may be started, but in that case
.Fn pipeline_want_out
must have been called with a negative
.Fa fd ;
otherwise, calls
.Fn pipeline_want_out source -1 .
In any event, calls
.Fn pipeline_want_in sink -1
on all sinks, none of which are allowed to be started.
Terminate arguments with
.Li NULL .
.Pp
This is an application-level connection; data may be intercepted between the
pipelines by the program before calling
.Fn pipeline_pump ,
which sets data flowing from the source to the sinks.
It is primarily useful when more than one sink pipeline is involved, in
which case the pipelines cannot simply be concatenated into one.
.Pp
The result is similar to
.Xr tee 1 ,
except that output can be sent to more than two places and can easily be
sent to multiple processes.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_command "pipeline *p" "pipecmd *cmd"
.Pp
Add a command to a pipeline.
.Pp
.It Xo Ft void
.Fn pipeline_command_argv "pipeline *p" "const char *name" "va_list argv"
.Xc
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_command_args "pipeline *p" "const char *name" ...
.Pp
Construct a new command and add it to a pipeline in one go.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_command_argstr "pipeline *p" "const char *argstr"
.Pp
Construct a new command from a shell-quoted string and add it to a pipeline
in one go.
See the comment against
.Fn pipecmd_new_argstr
above if you're tempted to use this function.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_commandv "pipeline *p" "va_list cmdv"
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_commands "pipeline *p" ...
.Pp
Convenience functions wrapping
.Fn pipeline_command
to add multiple commands at once.
Terminate arguments with
.Li NULL .
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_want_in "pipeline *p" "int fd"
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_want_out "pipeline *p" "int fd"
.Pp
Set file descriptors to use as the input and output of the whole pipeline.
If non-negative,
.Va fd
is used directly as a file descriptor.
If negative,
.Fn pipeline_start
will create pipes and store the input writing half and the output reading
half in the pipeline's
.Fa infd
or
.Fa outfd
field as appropriate.
The default is to leave input and output as stdin and stdout unless
.Fn pipeline_want_infile
or
.Fn pipeline_want_outfile
respectively has been called.
.Pp
Calling these functions supersedes any previous call to
.Fn pipeline_want_infile
or
.Fn pipeline_want_outfile
respectively.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_want_infile "pipeline *p" "const char *file"
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_want_outfile "pipeline *p" "const char *file"
.Pp
Set file names to open and use as the input and output of the whole
pipeline.
This may be more convenient than supplying file descriptors, and guarantees
that the files are opened with the same privileges under which the pipeline
is run.
.Pp
Calling these functions (even with
.Li NULL ,
which returns to the default of leaving input and output as stdin and
stdout) supersedes any previous call to
.Fn pipeline_want_in
or
.Fn pipeline_want_outfile
respectively.
.Pp
The given files will be opened when the pipeline is started.
If an output file does not already exist, it is created (with mode 0666
modified in the usual way by umask); if it does exist, then it is truncated.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_ignore_signals "pipeline *p" "int ignore_signals"
.Pp
If
.Va ignore_signals
is non-zero, ignore
.Li SIGINT
and
.Li SIGQUIT
in the calling process while the pipeline is running, like
.Xr system 3 .
Otherwise, and by default, leave their dispositions unchanged.
.Pp
.It Ft int Fn pipeline_get_ncommands "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Return the number of commands in this pipeline.
.Pp
.It Ft "pipecmd *" Ns Fn pipeline_get_command "pipeline *p" "int n"
.Pp
Return command number
.Va n
from this pipeline, counting from zero, or
.Li NULL
if
.Va n
is out of range.
.Pp
.It Xo Ft "pipecmd *" Ns
.Fn pipeline_set_command "pipeline *p" "int n" "pipecmd *cmd"
.Xc
.Pp
Set command number
.Va n
in this pipeline, counting from zero, to
.Va cmd ,
and return the previous command in that position.
Do nothing and return
.Li NULL
if
.Va n
is out of range.
.Pp
.It Ft pid_t Fn pipeline_get_pid "pipeline *p" "int n"
.Pp
Return the process ID of command number
.Va n
from this pipeline, counting from zero.
The pipeline must be started.
Return
.Li \-1
if
.Va n
is out of range or if the command has already exited and been reaped.
.Pp
Added in
.Nm
1.2.0.
.Pp
.It Ft "FILE *" Ns Fn pipeline_get_infile "pipeline *p"
.It Ft "FILE *" Ns Fn pipeline_get_outfile "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Get streams corresponding to
.Fa infd
and
.Fa outfd
respectively.
The pipeline must be started.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_dump "pipeline *p" "FILE *stream"
.Pp
Dump a string representation of
.Va p
to stream.
.Pp
.It Ft "char *" Ns Fn pipeline_tostring "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Return a string representation of
.Va p .
The caller should free the result.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_free "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Destroy a pipeline and all its commands.
Safely does nothing if
.Va p
is
.Li NULL .
May wait for the pipeline to complete if it has not already done so.
.El
.Ss Functions to run pipelines and handle signals
.Bl -tag -width 4n -compact
.It Vt typedef void pipeline_post_fork_fn (void) ;
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_install_post_fork "pipeline_post_fork_fn *fn"
.Pp
Install a post-fork handler.
This will be run in any child process immediately after it is forked.
For instance, this may be used for cleaning up application-specific signal
handlers.
Pass
.Li NULL
to clear any existing post-fork handler.
.Pp
See pipecmd_pre_exec for a similar facility limited to a single command
rather than global to the calling process.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_start "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Start the processes in a pipeline.
Installs this library's
.Li SIGCHLD
handler if not already installed.
Calls
.Li error (FATAL)
on error.
.Pp
The standard file descriptors (0, 1, and 2) must be open before calling this
function.
.Pp
.It Xo
.Ft int Fn pipeline_wait_all "pipeline *p" "int **statuses" "int *n_statuses"
.Xc
.Pp
Wait for a pipeline to complete.
Set
.No * Ns Va statuses
to a newly-allocated array of wait statuses, as returned by
.Xr waitpid 2 ,
and
.No * Ns Va n_statuses
to the length of that array.
The return value is similar to the exit status that a shell would return,
with some modifications.
If the last command exits with a signal (other than
.Li SIGPIPE ,
which is considered equivalent to exiting zero), then the return value is
128 plus the signal number; if the last command exits normally but non-zero,
then the return value is its exit status; if any other command exits
non-zero, then the return value is 127; otherwise, the return value is 0.
This means that the return value is only 0 if all commands in the pipeline
exit successfully.
.Pp
.It Ft int Fn pipeline_wait "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Wait for a pipeline to complete and return its combined exit status,
calculated as for
.Fn pipeline_wait_all .
.Pp
.It Ft int Fn pipeline_run "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Start a pipeline, wait for it to complete, and free it, all in one go.
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_pump "pipeline *p" ...
.Pp
Pump data among one or more pipelines connected using
.Fn pipeline_connect
until all source pipelines have reached end-of-file and all data has been
written to all sinks (or failed).
All relevant pipelines must be supplied: that is, no pipeline that has been
connected to a source pipeline may be supplied unless that source pipeline
is also supplied.
Automatically starts all pipelines if they are not already started, but does
not wait for them.
Terminate arguments with
.Li NULL .
.El
.Ss Functions to read output from pipelines
In general, output is returned as a pointer into a buffer owned by the
pipeline, which is automatically freed when
.Fn pipeline_free
is called.
This saves the caller from having to explicitly free individual blocks of
output data.
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width 4n -compact
.It Ft "const char *" Ns Fn pipeline_read "pipeline *p" "size_t *len"
.Pp
Read
.Va len
bytes of data from the pipeline, returning the data block.
.Va len
is updated with the number of bytes read.
.Pp
.It Ft "const char *" Ns Fn pipeline_peek "pipeline *p" "size_t *len"
.Pp
Look ahead in the pipeline's output for
.Va len
bytes of data, returning the data block.
.Va len
is updated with the number of bytes read.
The starting position of the next read or peek is not affected by this call.
.Pp
.It Ft size_t Fn pipeline_peek_size "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Return the number of bytes of data that can be read using
.Fn pipeline_read
or
.Fn pipeline_peek
solely from the peek cache, without having to read from the pipeline itself
(and thus potentially block).
.Pp
.It Ft void Fn pipeline_peek_skip "pipeline *p" "size_t len"
.Pp
Skip over and discard
.Va len
bytes of data from the peek cache.
Asserts that enough data is available to skip, so you may want to check
using
.Fn pipeline_peek_size
first.
.Pp
.It Ft "const char *" Ns Fn pipeline_readline "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Read a line of data from the pipeline, returning it.
.Pp
.It Ft "const char *" Ns Fn pipeline_peekline "pipeline *p"
.Pp
Look ahead in the pipeline's output for a line of data, returning it.
The starting position of the next read or peek is not affected by this call.
.El
.Ss Signal handling
.Nm
installs a signal handler for
.Li SIGCHLD ,
and collects the exit status of child processes in
.Fn pipeline_wait .
Applications using this library must either refrain from changing the
disposition of
.Li SIGCHLD
(in other words, must rely on
.Nm
for all child process handling) or else must make sure to restore
.Nm Ns 's
.Li SIGCHLD
handler before calling any of its functions.
.Pp
If the
.Fa ignore_signals
flag is set in a pipeline (which is the default), then the
.Li SIGINT
and
.Li SIGQUIT
signals will be ignored in the parent process while child processes are
running.
This mirrors the behaviour of
.Xr system 3 .
.Pp
.Nm
leaves child processes with the default disposition of
.Li SIGPIPE ,
namely to terminate the process.
It ignores
.Li SIGPIPE
in the parent process while running
.Fn pipeline_pump .
.Ss Reaping of child processes
.Nm
installs a
.Li SIGCHLD
handler that will attempt to reap child processes which have exited.
This calls
.Xr waitpid 2
with
.Li \-1 ,
so it will reap any child process, not merely those created by way of this
library.
At present, this means that if the calling program forks other child
processes which may exit while a pipeline is running, the program is not
guaranteed to be able to collect exit statuses of those processes.
.Pp
You should not rely on this behaviour, and in future it may be modified
either to reap only child processes created by this library or to provide a
way to return foreign statuses to the application.
Please contact the author if you have an example application and would like
to help design such an interface.
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
If the
.Ev PIPELINE_DEBUG
environment variable is set to
.Dq 1 ,
then
.Nm
will emit debugging messages on standard error.
.Pp
If the
.Ev PIPELINE_QUIET
environment variable is set to any value, then
.Nm
will refrain from printing an error message when a subprocess is terminated
by a signal.
Added in
.Nm
1.4.0.
.Sh EXAMPLES
In the following examples, function names starting with
.Li pipecmd_
or
.Li pipeline_
are real
.Nm
functions, while any other function names are pseudocode.
.Pp
The simplest case is simple.
To run a single command, such as
.Ic mv
.Pa source
.Pa dest :
.Bd -literal -offset indent
pipeline *p = pipeline_new_command_args ("mv", source, dest, NULL);
int status = pipeline_run (p);
.Ed
.Pp
.Nm
is often used to mimic shell pipelines, such as the following example:
.Pp
.Dl zsoelim < input-file | tbl | nroff -mandoc -Tutf8
.Pp
The code to construct this would be:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
pipeline *p;
int status;

p = pipeline_new ();
pipeline_want_infile (p, "input-file");
pipeline_command_args (p, "zsoelim", NULL);
pipeline_command_args (p, "tbl", NULL);
pipeline_command_args (p, "nroff", "-mandoc", "-Tutf8", NULL);
status = pipeline_run (p);
.Ed
.Pp
You might want to construct a command more dynamically:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
pipecmd *manconv = pipecmd_new_args ("manconv", "-f", from_code,
                                     "-t", "UTF-8", NULL);
if (quiet)
        pipecmd_arg (manconv, "-q");
pipeline_command (p, manconv);
.Ed
.Pp
Perhaps you want an environment variable set only while running a certain
command:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
pipecmd *less = pipecmd_new ("less");
pipecmd_setenv (less, "LESSCHARSET", lesscharset);
.Ed
.Pp
You might find yourself needing to pass the output of one pipeline to
several other pipelines, in a
.Dq tee
arrangement:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
pipeline *source, *sink1, *sink2;

source = make_source ();
sink1 = make_sink1 ();
sink2 = make_sink2 ();
pipeline_connect (source, sink1, sink2, NULL);
/* Pump data among these pipelines until there's nothing left. */
pipeline_pump (source, sink1, sink2, NULL);
pipeline_free (sink2);
pipeline_free (sink1);
pipeline_free (source);
.Ed
.Pp
Maybe one of your commands is actually an in-process function, rather than
an external program:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
pipecmd *inproc = pipecmd_new_function ("in-process", &func,
                                        NULL, NULL);
pipeline_command (p, inproc);
.Ed
.Pp
Sometimes your program needs to consume the output of a pipeline, rather
than sending it all to some other subprocess:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
pipeline *p = make_pipeline ();
const char *line;

pipeline_want_out (p, -1);
pipeline_start (p);
line = pipeline_peekline (p);
if (!strstr (line, "coding: UTF-8"))
        printf ("Unicode text follows:\n");
while (line = pipeline_readline (p))
        printf ("  %s", line);
pipeline_free (p);
.Ed
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr fork 2 ,
.Xr execve 2 ,
.Xr system 3 ,
.Xr popen 3 .
.Sh AUTHORS
.An -nosplit
Most of
.Nm
was written by
.An Colin Watson Aq cjwatson@debian.org ,
originally for use in man\-db.
The initial version was based very loosely on the
.Fn run_pipeline
function in GNU groff, written by
.An James Clark Aq jjc@jclark.com .
It also contains library code by
.An Markus Armbruster ,
and by various contributors to Gnulib.
.Pp
.Nm
is licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later.
See the README file for full details.
.Sh BUGS
Using this library in a program which runs any other child processes and/or
installs its own
.Li SIGCHLD
handler is unlikely to work.