ipipe - A cross-platform named-pipe library for Rust

This library allows the creation of platform-independant named pipes. Standard Read/Write traits are implemented. Higher level/more fleshed-out APIs are under development and will be added in future versions. Improvements and PRs welcome.

Example:

use ipipe::Pipe;
use std::thread;
use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};
use std::io::{BufRead, BufWriter};

const CANCEL: u8 = 24;

fn main()
{
    let mut pipe = Pipe::create().unwrap();
    println!("Name: {}", pipe.path().display());

    let writer = pipe.clone();
    thread::spawn(move || print_nums(writer));
    for line in BufReader::new(pipe).lines()
    {
        println!("{}", line.unwrap());
    }
}

fn print_nums(mut pipe: Pipe)
{
    for i in 1..=10
    {
        writeln!(&mut pipe, "{}", i).unwrap();
    }
    write!(&mut pipe, "{}", CANCEL as char).unwrap();
}

Running the above example program will output:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Pipe::create generates a random pipe name in a temporary location. Example path (Windows): \\.\pipe\pipe_23676_xMvclVhNKcg6iGf Example path (Unix): /tmp/pipe_1230_mFP8dx8uVl

Pipe::with_name allows a pipe name to be specified.

The 'static_pipe' feature

Enabling the static_pipe feature allows the creation of mutex-protected static pipes that can be written to from anywhere in a way that mimics stdout. Here's an example:

use ipipe::*;
use std::io::{BufRead, BufWriter};

let mut reader = ipipe::init("my_out").unwrap();

// You can get a handle to an already-initialized pipe like this:
// let mut reader = ipipe::get("my_pipe");
let s = BufReader::new(pipe).lines().next().unwrap();
println!("String received: {}", s);

// Drops the static pipe. Can also call `ipipe::close_all()` to drop all static pipes.
ipipe::close("my_out");

Then anywhere your program (or another program with enough permission to access the pipe) can write code like this:

pprintln!("my_pipe", "This text will be sent over the pipe!");

Lower level as well as more complete/intuitive APIs to the static pipes are also planned for a future release.

Development Notes

This project is very bare-bones in its current state, a proof-of-concept with some degree of practical usability at best. At this point, developers willing to contribute and improve would be very-much appreciated. As Windows named pipes work substantially different than Unix named pipes, there are likely unintuitive "features" of this crate in its current state when traveling from one platform to another. Sniping those is top priority.