Thread: Shared fd after a fork()

Hello guys,

I've seen examples as follows:

Code:

    int pfds[2];
    char buf[30];
    pipe(pfds);
    if (!fork()) {
        printf(" CHILD: writing to the pipe\n");
        close(pfds[0]);
        write(pfds[1], "test", 5);
        printf(" CHILD: exiting\n");
        exit(0);
    } else {
        printf("PARENT: reading from pipe\n");
        read(pfds[0], buf, 5);
        printf("PARENT: read \"%s\"\n", buf);
        wait(NULL);
    }

So the childprocess gets a copy of filedescriptors from the parents. But if the child closes a pfds[0], won't that pfds[0] in the parent process be useless? (appearently not!)
It's a bit confusing to me, cause I thought closing a filedescriptor, will close also one end of the pipe.

Thank you.