Named pipes provide the basic interprocess communications (IPC) mechanism in the UNIX environment. This IPC mechanism allows two processes on UNIX to send data to each other as if they are reading and writing sequential files. Each process opens a separate pipe for input or output to the other, and the input process waits for the output process to send data each time it reads its input pipe. Named pipes are also supported in the Windows environment and generally behave similarly to UNIX named pipes.
