I want to copy the contents of a named pipe to a file. I have tried using:

cat pipe.p >> transcript.log

but I have been unsuccessful, any ideas?

A named pipe is used for 2 processes to communicate with each other.

One process writes to the pipe where the other reads from the pipe.

What are you trying to accomplish anyway?

I know what a named pipe is!

What I am doing is a chat program, I am transmitting the messages between users through the named pipes. I want to send to a file the contents of the pipe, in order to keep a record of the conversation.

Seems to me a violation of privacy.

Do you have permission of those users to record their conversation?

use following syntax

make the content u r writing as a background process
ex::

mkfifo -m 600 foo
ls -l > foo &
cat foo