From: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 18:56:15 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: docs: Add section on using /dev/fd/* with upload and download calls.
X-Git-Tag: 1.8.0~8
X-Git-Url: http://git.annexia.org/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=acd25281bfa31b78fd03e25b495f66138a4dd987;p=libguestfs.git

docs: Add section on using /dev/fd/* with upload and download calls.
---

diff --git a/src/guestfs.pod b/src/guestfs.pod
index bb90de8..7d2f91c 100644
--- a/src/guestfs.pod
+++ b/src/guestfs.pod
@@ -334,6 +334,27 @@ Use L</guestfs_download>.  See L</DOWNLOADING> above.
 
 =back
 
+=head2 UPLOADING AND DOWNLOADING TO PIPES AND FILE DESCRIPTORS
+
+Calls like L</guestfs_upload>, L</guestfs_download>,
+L</guestfs_tar_in>, L</guestfs_tar_out> etc appear to only take
+filenames as arguments, so it appears you can only upload and download
+to files.  However many Un*x-like hosts let you use the special device
+files C</dev/stdin>, C</dev/stdout>, C</dev/stderr> and C</dev/fd/N>
+to read and write from stdin, stdout, stderr, and arbitrary file
+descriptor N.
+
+For example, L<virt-cat(1)> writes its output to stdout by
+doing:
+
+ guestfs_download (filename, "/dev/stdout");
+
+and you can write tar output to a pipe C<fd> by doing:
+
+ char devfd[64];
+ snprintf (devfd, sizeof devfd, "/dev/fd/%d", fd);
+ guestfs_tar_out ("/", devfd);
+
 =head2 LISTING FILES
 
 L</guestfs_ll> is just designed for humans to read (mainly when using