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    you can have multiple readers/writers with unnamed pipes as well. On Linux, they are not any more bi-directional than unamed pipe. There's a writing end and a reading end and data flows in one direction only. When you open a fifo in write mode, you get the writing end, in read mode the reading end, in rw mode, you write to the writing end and read from the reading. That's different from bi-directional pipes or unix domain sockets, where you actually have two separate flows of data in each direction. Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 21:03
  • @StephaneChazelas thanks for the feedback, I have updated the answer to be more specific, and clarify (I hope) pipes and directionality. Commented Mar 25, 2013 at 23:03
  • Does communication to a named pipe involve disk IO? Or is it all in-memory? What determines the performance envelope of these IPC mechanisms? Commented May 1, 2015 at 2:41