Programming

BTW, pipes do not buffer/delay write() data, but FILE* do delay output until you flush or overflow the buffer, unless you turn on unbuffered or line buffered output (setvbuf()). Graceful exit() flushes all pipes on all but the most crude C compilers.

Pipes are part of IPC, along with signals, shared memory, semaphores, message queues, mmap() of files, sockets. You can inherit a fd such as a pipe or socket from a parent. You can open a named pipe and if someone opens the opposite way (r/w), you are connected 1-1. BTW, you can pass fd down a pipe so another process can attach it. I prefer mmap(): no root requirement, all RAM as a buffer, hard copy after a crash and for a restart, no swap used. Some UNIX/LINUX flavors map socket resources into the file tree. UDP Sockets are neat, as they can broadcast and multicast. A really slick messaging app would multicast, so it scaled really well. When studying IPC, make sure your opinions do not come from way back. Systems have become quite different, and culturally, apps less root entangled.