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Working with Named Pipes
Pipes allow processes to to communicate with each other. A pipe may also be known as a "FIFO" (First In, First Out).
The following is an example on how to create a named pipe, named here as pipe1.
cd /tmp mkfifo pipe1
To send a message to the pipe, use:
echo "hello" > pipe1
The process will appear to be hung at this point. There is no other process running to collect the data, so the kernel suspends the process. The process is said to be "blocked" at this stage.
On another terminal, it is possible to collect the data from the pipe, as follows:
cat < /tmp/pipe1
The data from the pipe will now be read by cat (and written to the terminal), and the "blocked" writer process will be free to resume.
For some more information, see Bash FAQ #85.