According to Wikipedia, the definition of a Pipe or Pipeline is:
In Unix-like computer operating systems, a pipeline is the original software pipeline: a set of processes chained by their standard streams, so that the output of each process (stdout) feeds directly as input (stdin) of the next one. Each connection is implemented by an anonymous pipe. Filter programs are often used in this configuration. The concept was invented by Douglas McIlroy for Unix shells and it was named by analogy to a physical pipeline.
- Creating a named pipe:
- Running a background process which reads from the pipe, and writes to a zip file:
- Feeding the pipe with data (here we’re exporting an Oracle schema):
$ mknod example.pipe p
$ gzip < example.pipe > oracle-scott.exp.gz &
$ exp userid=scott/tiger file=example.pipe
Just for curiosity, Scott was one of the first employees at Oracle, and Tiger was the name of his cat.
