Piping into two processes simultaneously

[Leslie Mikesell]

In article <17680:Sep1021:08:2890 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:

>Even if your system does have FIFOs, it's a bad idea to use tee to pipe
>into two processes at once. If one of the processes blocks, tee will
>block after a pipeful.

The same thing would happen with a simple pipe to the slower process.  Why
is this a problem?

>Using multitee (under BSD) is much more sensible.

Does multitee just use larger buffers than pipes or is something else involved?

Les Mikesell
  les at chinet.chi.il.us