
Pipe: How the System Call That Ties Unix Together Came About - zaat
https://thenewstack.io/pipe-how-the-system-call-that-ties-unix-together-came-about/
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masonic
The author keeps writing "system call" when he means _shell directive for
assigning stdout /stdin_.

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zaat
It is a system call and not a shell directive:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_pipe#Unix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_pipe#Unix)

Also, man pipe.

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masonic
The use case _in the article_ is piping stdout from one program to stdin of
another _in the shell_ , not using pipe(2).

To wit: '... the symbol for pipes should instead be “|.” '

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zaat
After digging into it I came with this, which seems worth a submission on its
own: [https://brandonwamboldt.ca/how-linux-pipes-work-under-the-
ho...](https://brandonwamboldt.ca/how-linux-pipes-work-under-the-hood-1518/)

Basically, the shell is using the pipe system call under the hood.

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ktpsns
tl,dr; Ken Thompson invented them overnight in 1973 and everybody was happy
afterwards. An original journal article is linked
([http://emulator.pdp-11.org.ru/misc/1978.07_-_Bell_System_Tec...](http://emulator.pdp-11.org.ru/misc/1978.07_-_Bell_System_Technical_Journal.pdf))
which shows an example of pipes at page 25.

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yesenadam
Funny, I thought McIlroy invented them, in 1964...and the article confirms
that.

