Subject: bug#6900: mktemp: want option to make a fifo

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:07:53 -0700

On 08/24/2010 12:17 PM, John Reiser wrote:
 > Using fifos allows for arbitrary flexibility of "fanout multiplexing"
 > my interactive commands.

I'm not sure what is meant by "arbitrary flexibility", but of course a
shell script that is using pipes can also decide dynamically which
processes to start up and connect to the control channel, and what
output these processes will generate, and (when there are multiple
control channels) which control channels each such process will
connect to.

I take your point that named fifos provide a different style for
creating networks of processes, a style that may be more convenient in
many cases.  However, for small examples pipes seem quite adequate,
and for large examples mktemp -d seems to simplify the code.  Also,
mktemp -d would simplify administration of large scripts: I'd far
rather see a small /tmp, one subdirectory per running script, than a
/tmp filled with countless fifos and other temporary files.

The bottom line is that so far we haven't seen a real example
exhibiting a need for mktemp --fifo that can't be satisfied just as
well with existing tools.