Unix tip: Using named pipes

Named pipes, like their unnamed counterparts, allow separate processes to communicate, but they do so by establishing a presence in the file system. They are sometimes referred to as FIFOs. FIFO stands for ???first in, first out??? and, as you might suspect, these pipes work like a line at the supermarket. If you get in line first, you should be the first to push your shopping cart out to the parking lot. But, unlike unnamed pipes, these pipes can be viewed with the ls command and are created with the mkfifo command.