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98

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I am reading the C programing guide and all of a sudden it starts talking about pipes. Can someone simply tell me what a pipe is.

A: 

You want to read Beej's IPC Guide, specifically the pipe section.

There is no form of IPC that is simpler than pipes. Implemented on every flavor of Unix, pipe() and fork() make up the functionality behind the "|" in "ls | more". They are marginally useful for cool things, but are a good way to learn about basic methods of IPC.

Also check the other guides at http://beej.us/guide/.

pmg
+2  A: 

They are OS objects appearing as file descriptors in different processes, allowing output of one to be the input of the other. Read here.

Nikolai N Fetissov
A: 

Most likely, this means a Pipeline as in the context of Unix-like operating systems, see Pipeline (Unix) in Wikpedia. It is a chain of processes with the output of one process being the input to the next one.

Sven Marnach