[erlang-questions] Can a port use named pipes or other unnamed piped than the standard ones?

[Roessner, Silvester]

Hello,
 
can I open a port so it communicates via a named pipe or an unnamed pipe other than StdIn and StdOut? 
 
The documentation says
 
open_port(PortName, PortSettings) -> port()
 
PortName = {spawn, Command} | {fd, In, Out}
 
{fd, In, Out} 
Allows an Erlang process to access any currently opened file descriptors used by Erlang. The file descriptor In can be used for standard input, and the file descriptor Out for standard output. It is only used for various servers in the Erlang operating system (shell and user). Hence, its use is very limited.

But I haven't found details on {fd, In, Out} and how I could open a new fd.
 
 
 
Backgroud:
 
We have a legacy Fortran program (called Marez) that opens many files and uses this files as a database. I want to use Erlang to replace this bunch of files by mnesia tables.
 
My intention is to open Marez as a port, send the input that it needs via StdIn and get the answer back from StdOut.
 
Since I also want to substitute all file accesses from Marez by mnesia accesses it would be cool if I could open more pipes than only StdIn, StdOut and StdErr. In this way I could replace in Marez all OPEN file by OPEN pipe.
 
Otherwise I would have to multiplex all these accesses to StdIn and StdOut.
 

mit freundlichen Grüßen / with kind regards

 

Silvester Rößner


 
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