Named Pipe

Definitions

1. A special file (FIFO) in the file system that enables unidirectional or bidirectional inter-process communication between unrelated processes on the same machine — unlike anonymous pipes, named pipes persist as file system entries and can be opened by any process with the appropriate permissions.

   In plain English: A special file that acts as a communication channel between programs on the same computer, like a mailbox that one program writes to and another reads from.

   Example: "The logger daemon reads from a named pipe at `/tmp/app.pipe` so any process on the box can write structured logs to it without a socket."

Related Terms

• Pipe
• Microkernel
• Page Cache
• POSIX
• Process Group
• Shared Memory
• Signal Handler
• Unix Domain Socket
• Unix Socket
• XPC