mknod() not creating named pipe - linux

Question

I'm trying to create a FIFO named pipe using the mknod() command:
int main() {
char* file="pipe.txt";
int state;
state = mknod(file, S_IFIFO & 0777, 0);
printf("%d",state);
return 0;
}
But the file is not created in my current directory. I tried listing it by ls -l . State returns -1.
I found similar questions here and on other sites and I've tried the solution that most suggested:
int main() {
char* file="pipe.txt";
int state;
unlink(file);
state = mknod(file, S_IFIFO & 0777, 0);
printf("%d",state);
return 0;
}
This made no difference though and the error remains. Am I doing something wrong here or is there some sort of system intervention which is causing this problem?
Help.. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You are using & to set the file type instead of |. From the docs:
The file type for path is OR'ed into the mode argument, and the
application shall select one of the following symbolic
constants...
Try this:
state = mknod(file, S_IFIFO | 0777, 0);
Because this works:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main() {
char* file="pipe.txt";
int state;
unlink(file);
state = mknod(file, S_IFIFO | 0777, 0);
printf("state %d\n", state);
return 0;
}
Compile it:
gcc -o fifo fifo.c
Run it:
$ strace -e trace=mknod ./fifo
mknod("pipe.txt", S_IFIFO|0777) = 0
state 0
+++ exited with 0 +++
See the result:
$ ls -l pipe.txt
prwxrwxr-x. 1 lars lars 0 Jul 16 12:54 pipe.txt