ls & file pipes (FIFO), curses...

[avalon]

G'day, can anyone tell me how 'ls' knows whether a
file is a regular file or a pipe ?

When i do a stat(2) call on the file, it is returned
as a regular file.  What tricks does ls perform ?

Also, a question about curses, whenever I call one of
the input routines, say getstr(), wscanw(), etc,
the program hangs while reading data in read(2).
I have called initscr() and various other curses calls
BEFORE getting to these (successfully too :/ ).
The only thing the program responds to after this is
manual sending of signals to the process :-(.
Do i need to make any *other* calls to get these
to work or is it a deeper, more serious problem ?
My environ. is a pyramid 9825, OSx5.1, BSD universe.

thanks,
-avalon

p.s. sorry for the crosspost but the curses question/
problem is still unresolved after posting to c.u.q.