Pipe
An OS-provided unidirectional byte stream used to connect processes or components, usually represented by file descriptors.
Definition
A pipe is an OS-provided unidirectional byte stream used to move data between two endpoints.
In Unix-like systems, pipes are represented as file descriptors.
Common uses
- shell pipelines like
a | b - connecting a parent process to a child process’s stdin/stdout
- log forwarding between processes
Failure mode you will see
If the reader disappears and the writer keeps writing, the writer may get SIGPIPE or a write error.