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This is my user-mode pipeline library, and the "up" pipeline program.

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WARNING: THIS IS A PRELIMINARY RELEASE WHICH IS INCOMPLETE AND
         HAS MANY PROBLEMS!  (See the BUGS file for examples.)
	 It is released now so that I can get suggestions on it,
	 and perhaps even get fixes or new code.  The available
	 functions and their arguments are subject to change.
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All of this library is under the GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
The main "up" program which uses the library is under the GNU GENERAL
PUBLIC LICENSE.  Both of these licenses should have been distributed
as part of this package under the files COPYING-LGPL and COPYING.
If not, you can write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple
Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA to receive a copy.

This library requires the use of the "regex" regular expression library.
It also wants to use the "zlib" compression library.  These libraries
are available from various open software sites.

The files in the library have various prefixes to indicate their type.
Files beginning with "Read" are reading endpoint devices for the left
end of a pipeline.  Files beginning with "Write" are writing endpoint
devices for the right end of a pipeline.  Files beginning with "Pipe"
are pass-through filtering devices for the middle of a pipeline.
Files beginning with "up" are common support routines called by the
program or by the devices.

The CONCEPTS file is a description of how the up library works internally
and is a guide to developers of new devices.

The up.3 file is a (incomplete) man page for the up library.

The "up" program is an example application which uses the user-mode
pipeline library.  It builds and runs a user mode pipeline according
to the arguments given on the command line.  This allows many types of
common UNIX file piping operations to be performed by one process.


David I. Bell
dbell@canb.auug.org.au
28 April 2001