PUMP(1)                                                   PUMP(1)

     NAME
          pump - copy asynchronously via a large circular buffer

     SYNOPSIS
          pump [ -b iando ] [ -d sleepms ] [ -f ofile ] [ -i ireadsize
          ] [ -k KB-buf ] [ -o owritesize ] [ -s start-KB ] [ file ...
          ]

     DESCRIPTION
          Pump copies files (or standard input if none) to standard
          output by using two processes, one reading and one writing,
          sharing a large circular buffer, thus permitting the reading
          process to get ahead of the writing process if the output
          device is slow (e.g., an optical disc).  This in turn can
          keep the output device busy.  The pipeline `dd | dd' can
          approximate this, but pipe buffering is limited to 64K
          bytes, which is fairly modest.

          Options are:

          -b  sets the size of read and write operations to iando
              bytes.  The default size is 8 kilobytes.
          -d  causes the output process to sleep for sleepms millisec-
              onds initially, giving the reading process time to accu-
              mulate data in the buffer.
          -f  writes ofile rather than standard output
          -i  sets the size of read operations to ireadsize bytes.
          -k  allocates a circular buffer of KB-buf kilobytes rather
              than the default 5000 kilobytes.
          -o  sets the size of write operations to owritesize bytes.
          -s  prevents output until start-KB kilobytes have been read.

     EXAMPLES
          Append a venti(8) arena to a DVD or BD quickly.
               cdfs
               venti/rdarena arena0 arena.3 |
                    pump -b 65536 -k 51200 >/mnt/cd/wd/arena.3

     SOURCE
          /sys/src/cmd/pump.c

     SEE ALSO
          cp(1), dd(1), ecp(1), cdfs(4)

     BUGS
          Pump processes spin while waiting for the circular buffer to
          fill or drain.

     Page 1                       Plan 9            (printed 12/21/24)