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  3. Node.js — Check if a Path is a FIFO File (Named Pipe)

Node.js — Check if a Path is a FIFO File (Named Pipe)

Node.js provides all the functionality you need to interact with the local file system. The integrated fs core module has everything needed. It also allows you to detect the file type. If you need to detect whether a given path points to a named pipe (known as FIFO) on your local disk, you can do that out of the box.

A named pipe (FIFO file) is an extension of the pipe concept on Unix and Unix-like systems. Named pipes are like unnamed pipes that you might use yourself. For example, ls | grep <keyword> is an unnamed pipe. In contrast, named pipes are writable files on your local disk. They are used for inter-process communication.

This tutorial shows you how to detect whether a given file path points to a FIFO file. We’re also creating a convenient utility function that you can use in your projects.

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Determine Whether a Path Points to a FIFO File

Node.js comes with the fs core module. This module contains all the required functionality to check whether a given path resolves to a FIFO file. Here’s a description of how to detect it: retrieve the Stats instance of the given file path. Then, you can use the stats.isFIFO() method to detect whether the file is a named pipe.

Here’s the isFifo utility method which you could use in your project:

import { stat } from 'node:fs/promises'

/**
 * Determine whether the given `path` describes a first-in-first-out (FIFO) pipe.
 *
 * @param {String} path
 *
 * @returns {Boolean}
 */
async function isFifo(path) {  
  const stats = await Fs.stat(path)

  return stats.isFIFO()
}

await isFifo('/tmp/myfifo')  
// true

await isFifo('./node_modules')  
// false

We have related tutorials here on Future Studio to this tutorial. You might be interested in one of the following articles:

Use the @supercharge/fs Package

I’m the maintainer of the @supercharge/fs package providing convenient file system utilities. This package comes with a handy isFifo(path) method determining whether the given path points to a named pipe (FIFO) on your local hard disk:

import Fs from '@supercharge/fs'

await Fs.isFifo('/tmp/myfifo')  
// true

await Fs.isFifo('./node_modules')  
// false

Enjoy!

Mentioned Resources

Marcus Pöhls

Marcus is a fullstack JS developer. He’s passionate about the hapi framework for Node.js and loves to build web apps and APIs. Creator of Futureflix and the “learn hapi” learning path.

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