What are pipes in IPC?
In system programming, we can envision a pipe as a conduit within memory designed for transporting data between two or more processes. This conduit adheres to the producer-consumer model: one process, the producer, funnels data into the pipe, while another, the consumer, taps into this stream to read the data. As a pivotal element of IPC, pipes establish a unidirectional flow of information. This setup ensures that data consistently moves in one direction – from the “write end” to the “read end” of the pipe. This mechanism allows processes to communicate in a streamlined and efficient manner, much like water flowing through a pipe, with one process smoothly passing information down the line to the next.
Pipes are used in a variety of system-level programming tasks. The most common applications include the following:
- Command-line utilities: Pipes are often used to connect the output of one command-line utility to the...
