Named pipe Vs unnamed pipe

A few of the important differences between named pipes and un-named pipes are:

Named Pipes	Unnamed pipes
Named pipes are given a name and exist as a file in a system, represented by an inode. mkfifo ( char *path, mode_t access_mode)	They do not have names, also referred to as anonymous and identified by their two file descriptors. pipe (int fd[2]);
They can be used even among unrelated processes.	They can be used only between related processes.
They are bidirectional, which means the same FIFO can be read from as well as written into.	They are unidirectional, two separate pipes are needed for reading and writing.
Once created, they exist in the file system independent of the process, can be used by other processes.	Un-named pipes vanish as soon as it is closed or one of the related processes terminates.
Named pipes can be used for communication between systems across networks	They are local, they cannot be used across networks.

For details:

• Named pipes
• Unnamed pipes

Named-pipe Vs Unnamed Pipes

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‹ Priority inversion & its solutions

Named pipes vs Regular files ›

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Categories: Operating system (OS)