Rpipe | Pipe semantics in R -

That code is typical of a program that wants to read output generated by some other program. The os.Pipe() function returns a connected pair of os.File entities (or, on error—which should not be simply ignored—doesn't) where a write on the second (w or wpipe) entity shows up as readable bytes on the first (r / rpipe) entity. But—this is the key to half the answer to your first question—how will a reader know when all writers are finished writing?

For a reader to get an EOF indication, all writers that have or had access to the write side of the pipe must call the close operation. By passing the write side of the pipe to a program that we start with cmd.Start(), we allow that command to access the write side of the pipe. When that command closes that pipe, one of the entities with access has closed the pipe. But another entity with access hasn't closed it yet: we have write access.

To see an EOF, then, we must close off access to our wpipe, with wpipe.Close(). So that answer the first half of:

1. Why is inst.wpipe closed and set to nil?

The set-to-nil part may or may not have any function; you should inspect the rest of the code to find out if it does.

1. Is dup2(pipe_fd[1], 1) the C analogue of cmd.Stdout = inst.wpipe; inst.wpipe.Close()?

Not precisely. The dup2 level is down in the POSIX OS area, while cmd.Stdout is at a higher (OS-independent) level. The POSIX implementation of cmd.Start() will wind up calling dup2 (or something equivalent) like this after calling fork (or something equivalent). The POSIX equivalent of inst.wipe.Close() is close(wfd) where wfd is the POSIX file number in wpipe.

In C code that doesn't have any higher level wrapping around it, we'd have something like: