Thread: pipe stream data I/O

I am trying to have two programs share information. The original running program streams data to a pipe and the second program should read from that pipe concurrently. They are two different executables. The way I have it now is the first program executes the second program with a system call on UNIX.

Code:

first program


int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
//pipe is created

              if(pipe(writepipe)==-1) {
                    perror("Pipe writepipe creation failed.\n");   //Pipe writepipe created
              exit(1);
                   } 
               else
                 printf("Pipeline write created.\n");


//pipe is wrote to

 p1=draw_geom_buf.value[0];
 data=p1;
 write(writepipe[0],&data,sizeof(data));


//second program is executed
case XK_F4: //>>DDC
     printf("Displaying new window\n");
   system("./program2&");



second program

data is read from pipe? NO

int writepipe[2];
float input;

read(writepipe[1],&input,sizeof(input));
 cout << input << endl;

It prints out a bunch of zeros, is there anyway to fix this?

Thanks

DC