greetings

is there any way to detect if data has been piped to a program via stdin?

if i try to check stdin in the usual ways, the program stops waiting from
input from stdin (ie con:).

clues?

AX=4400H
BX=file handle (0=stdin)

returns: DX=IOCTL device info

If bit 7 is set, it's a device (stdin). 0 means a disk file.

The files unit at http://users.southeast.net/~rdonais/tpascal.htm has
a function called IsDevice that uses I/O-Control to determine if a
file is assigned to a device.  IsDevice(INPUT) would return true if
input was _not_ redirected, (e.g. associated w/ CON device), or was
redirected from a device such as CON, LPT1, PRN, COM1, etc.  

IsDevice(INPUT) would return false if input was redirected from a DOS
file.  Since DOS uses files to implement pipes, piped input would
appear as being redirected from a file.

    ...red