Description
Assignment 1: Familiarization with Unix system calls on process creation and management
1a. Write a program in C/C++ under the Linux environment that would perform the following:
- Create five processes A, B, C, D, and E.
- The processes A, B and C will each generate 50 pseudo-random non zero integers. The processes A and B will forward the numbers in sorted order to process D (through pipes). The process C will forward the numbers in sorted order to process E (through pipes).
- The process D will read the numbers received from the two pipes in sorted order, merge them, and forward the numbers in sorted order to process E (through pipes).
- The process E will read the numbers received from the two pipes in sorted order, merge them, and print all the numbers in sorted order. Use pipes for inter process communication. ‐
1b. Write a program in C/C++ under the Linux environment that would perform the following:
- In a loop, read a character string containing the name of an executable program with command line arguments, if any. ‐
- Fork a child process, and execute the program. o The loop will terminate if the command “quit” is entered.
Submission Guidelines:
- Create two separate programs for the two assignments, and name them
Ass1_<groupno>_1a and Ass1_<groupno>_1b (replace <groupno> by your group number).
- You must show the running version of the program(s) to your assigned TA during the lab hours.
Things to study:
- fork() system call
- pipe() system call
- execlp() / execvp() / execve() system call
Evaluation Guidelines:
Total marks for this assignment are 25. While entering marks, the partwise break up should also be entered according to the marking guidelines given below.
| Items for 1a | Marks |
| Process creation | 8 |
| Pseudo random number generation | 5 |
| Pipe creation | 8 |
| Reading from pipe | 5 |
| Writing to pipe | 5 |
| Merging of numbers | 4 |
| Total | 20 |
| Items for 1b | Marks |
| Reading of arguments in a loop | 5 |
| Spawning the new processes using fork | 5 |
| Passing the command line arguments to the new process | 5 |
| Total | 15 |
