12.1.7 Pipes

A Scheme pipe is internal to Scheme, and not related to OS-level pipes (which are file-stream ports) for communicating between different processes.

(make-pipe [limit input-name output-name])

→   input-port?   output-port?

limit : positive-exact-integer? = #f

input-name : any/c = 'pipe

output-name : any/c = 'pipe

Returns two port values: the first port is an input port and the second is an output port. Data written to the output port is read from the input port, with no intermediate buffering. The ports do not need to be explicitly closed.

If limit is #f, the new pipe holds an unlimited number of unread bytes (i.e., limited only by the available memory). If limit is a positive number, then the pipe will hold at most limit unread/unpeeked bytes; writing to the pipe’s output port thereafter will block until a read or peek from the input port makes more space available. (Peeks effectively extend the port’s capacity until the peeked bytes are read.)

The optional input-name and output-name are used as the names for the returned input and out ports, respectively.

(pipe-content-length pipe-port) → exact-nonnegative-integer?

pipe-port : port?

Returns the number of bytes contained in a pipe, where pipe-port is either of the pipe’s ports produced by make-pipe. The pipe’s content length counts all bytes that have been written to the pipe and not yet read (though possibly peeked).