co-processes and bash (ksh does it, can bash?)

[Paul Falstad]

larry at mitra.mitra.com (Larry Williamson) wrote:
>Ksh supports the concept of a co-process. You can start a process in
>the background with it's stdin and stdout connected to the shell. You
>do this by putting the |& operator after the command. You can then use
>read -p to read from the co-process and print -p to write to it.
>
>I don't see any mention of this nice feature in the BASH
>documentation.

Hmm.  zsh supports this, using a slightly different syntax.  You
use the "coproc" keyword instead of |&, and use >&p or <&p instead
of -p.  I'd probably use process substitution instead, though, to
open a pipe to or from a process.  The coproc stuff wasn't tested very
well because I couldn't really think of a good use for it.

--
Paul Falstad                     | 10 PRINT "PRINCETON CS"
pfalstad at phoenix.princeton.edu   | 20 GOTO 10