Regular pipe vs. Named Pipe

[Dan Bernstein]

In article <28552162.546B at tct.com> chip at tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
> According to brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein):
> >Pipes are part of UNIX.  Named pipes aren't.
> The second quoted sentence is vacuous.  There is no longer any one OS
> that can be called "UNIX".

Pipes have been part of UNIX since before its first widespread
implementation. They're supported by all UNIX systems; a system without
pipes cannot be UNIX.

In contrast, a system doesn't have to support named pipes to be UNIX.
Lots of UNIX systems didn't---and still don't---have named pipes. So
named pipes aren't part of UNIX. They're just an add-on, a feature which
happens to be supported in similar ways by several vendors but isn't
available everywhere.

---Dan