irix - pty (7)

     pty, pts -	pseudo terminal	driver

     The pty driver provides a device-pair termed a pseudo terminal.  A	pseudo
     terminal is a pair	of character devices, a	master device and a slave
     device.  The slave	device provides	processes an interface identical to
     that described in termio(7).  However, whereas all	other devices which
     provide the interface described in	termio(7) have a hardware device of
     some sort behind them, the	slave device has, instead, another process
     manipulating it through the master	half of	the pseudo terminal.  That is,
     anything written on the master device is given to the slave device	as
     input and anything	written	on the slave device is presented as input on
     the master	device.

     The following ioctl calls apply only to pseudo terminals:

     TIOCPKT
	  Enable/disable packet	mode.  Packet mode is enabled by specifying
	  (by reference) a nonzero parameter and disabled by specifying	(by
	  reference) a zero parameter.	When applied to	the master side	of a
	  pseudo terminal, each	subsequent read	from the terminal will return
	  data written on the slave part of the	pseudo terminal	preceded by a
	  zero byte (symbolically defined as TIOCPKT_DATA), or a single	byte
	  reflecting control status information.  In the latter	case, the byte
	  is an	inclusive-or of	zero or	more of	the bits:

	  TIOCPKT_FLUSHREAD
	       whenever	the read queue for the terminal	is flushed.

	  TIOCPKT_FLUSHWRITE
	       whenever	the write queue	for the	terminal is flushed.

	  TIOCPKT_STOP
	       whenever	output to the terminal is stopped a la ^S.

	  TIOCPKT_START
	       whenever	output to the terminal is restarted.

	  TIOCPKT_DOSTOP
	       whenever	t_stopc	is ^S and t_startc is ^Q.

	  TIOCPKT_NOSTOP
	       whenever	the start and stop characters are not ^S/^Q.

	  This mode is used by rlogin(1C) and rlogind(1M) to implement a
	  remote-echoed, locally ^S/^Q flow-controlled remote login with
	  proper back-flushing of output; it can be used by other similar
	  programs.

     The code sequence shown below demonstrates	how to allocate	pseudo
     terminals.	 Pseudo	terminals, like	all files, must	have the correct file
     permissions to be accessible.  The	_getpty(3) library function takes care
     of	this problem.

     #include <fcntl.h>
     #include <unistd.h>

     /*
      *	Find a pseudo tty to use and open both sides.
      *	 filedes[0] receives the master	file descriptor	while filedes[1]
      *	 receives the slave.  The master is opened with	O_NDELAY as commonly
      *	 needed	in daemons such	as rlogind and telnetd.
      */
     int		 /* -1 on failure */
     findPseudoTTY(int *filedes)
     {
	 char *line;

	 line =	_getpty(&filedes[0], O_RDWR|O_NDELAY, 0600, 0);
	 if (0 == line)
	     return -1;
	 if (0 > (filedes[1] = open(line, O_RDWR))) {
	     (void)close(filedes[0]);
	     return -1;
	 }
	 return	0;
     }

     /dev/ptc			   - master pseudo terminal
     /dev/tty[qrstuvwxyz][0-99]	   - slave pseudo terminals
     /dev/pts			   - equivalent	to /dev/ttyq[0-9]

     getpty(3)