The pipes we've seen in the previous recipe are temporary, in the sense that when no process has them open, they cease to exist. FIFOs (also called named pipes) are different; they are special pipes that exist as a special file on the filesystem. In principle, any process, assuming it has the right permissions, can access a FIFO. This last one is the FIFO-distinctive characteristic. Using files allows us to program a more general communication mechanism to put processes in communication, even without an ancestor relationship; or, in other words, we can use FIFO to get any two files to communicate. In this recipe, you'll learn how to program FIFO.
Learning how to use FIFO
How to do it...
In this...