Unix pipes A key concept in the original Unix operating system is the idea of a pipe. A pipe is an abstraction allowing data to be moved as an unstructured stream of bytes between programs. Using pipes, users can link together multiple programs to complete tasks, feeding data through several consecutive small programs. This contrasts with typical operating systems of the era, which require a single large program that can handle the entire task, or alternately, used files to pass data, which was resource expensive and time-consuming.
unix pipes a key concept in the original unix operating system is the idea of a pipe a pipe is an abstraction allowing data to be moved as an unstructured stream of bytes between programs using pipes users can link together multiple programs to complete tasks feeding data through several consecutive small programs this contrasts with typical operating systems of the era which require a single large program that can handle the entire task or alternately used files to pass data which was resource expensive and time-consuming