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Creating Pipelines

Because UNIX commands are designed to work with character streams and standard I/O, the standard output from one command can easily be used as the standard input to another command. This is achieved with the use of the "pipe" character "|". Connecting a sequence of UNIX commands together in this manner is known as creating a "pipeline".

This is very, very common in UNIX and a very powerful technique. Many other operating systems have tried to emulate this capability.

up previous next contents
Next: Example 3-5: Simple pipelines. Up: Combining UNIX Commands Previous: Redirecting the standard error   Contents