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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Regular pipe vs. Named Pipe
Message-ID: <25293:Jun1217:36:2291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 12 Jun 91 17:36:22 GMT
References: <14079@dog.ee.lbl.gov> <14192: Jun923:16:0791@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <28552162.546B@tct.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 17

In article <28552162.546B@tct.com> chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
> According to brnstnd@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