how big is a pipe?

[Chris Maltby]

Sys V pipes will work fine in just about all circumstances
as long as PIPSIZ (usually 5120) is a multiple of the file system
buffer size (typically 1024). However, on the 3b2 (and the ELXSI)
which have 2048 byte buffers, you get quite interesting behavior
from pipes when reading and writing in 2048 byte chunks. We discovered
and fixed this on the ELXSI - the 3b2 is still broken at sys5 rel2.
The best fix is to set PIPSIZ to be (10 * BSIZE).

Symptoms include pipe 'constipation', data mangling etc.
-- 
Chris Maltby - Neology Ltd	(chris at neology.oz)

PHONE: +61-2-662-4111			UUCP:	seismo!neology.oz!chris
CSNET:	chris at neology.oz		ARPA:	chris%neology.oz at seismo.cs.gov.arpa