Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms: pipe
pipe
- in UNIX, DOS, Windows, OS/2, and other operating systems, a way of stringing two programs together so that the output of one of them is fed to the other as input. For example, theWindows command
C:> dir | sort | more
invokes dir (which lists the names of the files on a disk), feeds its output to sort (which puts the items in alphabetical order), and feeds that output to more (which displays it one screenful at a time).Under Windows, the three programs execute in succession, each writing its output on a file that is read by the next. Under UNIX, however, they run concurrently and communicate without writing the piped data to disk.See also broken pipe.
- the character | (the pipe symbol).
