Named Pipe
One of the strengths of Unix has always been inter-process communication. Amongst the facilities provided by the OS are so-called pipes. These pipes connect the output of one Unix process to the input of another. This is fine if both processes are living in the same parent process space, started by the same user. There are however circumstances where the communicating processes must use named pipes. One such circumstance is that the processes have to be executed under different user names and permissions.
These named pipes are special files that can exist anywhere in the file system. These named pipe special files are made with the command mkfifo as in mkfifo mypipe.
A named pipe is marked with a p as the first letter of the mode string, e.g.
Read more about this topic: Unix File Types
Famous quotes containing the words named and/or pipe:
“I sometimes think I was born to live up to my name. How could I be anything else but what I am having been named Madonna? I would either have ended up a nun or this.”
—Madonna [Madonna Louise Ciccione] (b. 1959)
“On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me,
“Pipe a song about a Lamb”;
So I piped with merry chear.
“Piper pipe that song again”—
So I piped, he wept to hear.
“Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear”;
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)