Anonymous pipe
transient computing pipe constructed as part of a shell pipeline
In computer science, an anonymous pipe is a simplex FIFO communication channel that may be used for one-way interprocess communication (IPC). An implementation is often integrated into the operating system's file IO subsystem. Typically a parent program opens anonymous pipes, and creates a new process that inherits the other ends of the pipes, or creates several new processes and arranges them in a pipeline.
Full-duplex (two-way) communication normally requires two anonymous pipes.
Pipelines are supported in most popular operating systems, from Unix onwards, and are created using the "|" character in many shells.
Unix
Pipelines are an important part of many traditional Unix applications and support for them is well integrated into most Unix-like operating systems. Pipes are created using the pipe system call, which creates a new pipe and returns a pair of file descriptors referring to the read and write ends of the pipe. Many traditional Unix programs are designed as filters to work with pipes.
Microsoft Windows
Like many other device IO and IPC facilities in the Windows API, anonymous pipes are created and configured with API functions that are specific to the IO facility. In this case CreatePipe is used to create an anonymous pipe with separate handles for the read and write ends of the pipe.
The public source identifies “Anonymous pipe” as transient computing pipe constructed as part of a shell pipeline. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Anonymous, pipe and transient.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q923907. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Anonymous pipe” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.