when opening a FIFO for reading+writing, and blocking - how to tell if other side opened for reading or writing?

If I open a fifo for reading+writing in blocking mode: fd = open("foo", "O_RDWR"); Then it blocks until someone on the other end opens it for either reading or writing. But how do I know which? if(???) { read(fd, .......); } else { write(fd, ......); } close(fd); (I need that close, because if I am writing I need to send an EOF to the other end. And any writer will send a single line through and close, so I also need to close if I read.) What do I put instead of the ??? to figure out what the other end did? Is non-blocking and select() my only option? Is there a way to inspect fd and see if it's ready for reading or writing?