Recap: Parallel Word Counter

Combine fork, pipes, and threads: all the OS concepts in one challenge

Mission: Word Count on the Punch Tape

A very long punch tape has arrived at the computing center and the words on it need to be counted. A child process does the counting and sends the result back to the parent through a pipe, so it can be logged.

The data is already on the right. Do the following, in order:

1. Write int count_words(const char *text): counts words separated by spaces
2. Create a pipe, then fork
3. The child counts the words in text, the array already declared ("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"), converts the count to a string with sprintf, writes it to the pipe, and exits
4. The parent reads the count from the pipe and prints the result, then waits for the child

Example

Your program should print

Child counted: 9 words

Use pipe(), fork(), write()/read() for pipe communication, and sprintf() to format the number