pipe

n 1: a tube with a small bowl at one end; used for smoking

tobacco [syn: {tobacco pipe}]

2: a long tube made of metal or plastic that is used to carry

water or oil or gas etc. [syn: {pipage}, {piping}]

3: a hollow cylindrical shape [syn: {tube}]

4: a tubular wind instrument [syn: {tabor pipe}]

5: the flues and stops on a pipe organ [syn: {organ pipe}, {pipework}]

v 1: utter a shrill cry [syn: {shriek}, {shrill}, {screech}, {pipe

up}]

2: transport by pipeline; of oil, water, gas, etc.

3: play one a pipe

4: trim with piping, as of garments

pipe

1. One of {Unix}'s buffers which can be

written to by one {asynchronous} process and read by another,

with the {kernel} suspending and waking up the sender and

receiver according to how full the pipe is. In later versions

of Unix, rather than using an anonymous kernel-managed

temporary file to implement a pipe, it can be named and is

implemented as a local {socket} pair.

2. "|" {ASCII} character 124. Used to represent a

pipe between two processes in a {shell} command line. E.g.

grep foo log | more

which feeds the output of grep into the input of more without

requiring a named temporary file and without waiting for the

first process to finish.

3. A connection to a {network}.

See also {light pipe}.

(1996-09-24)