| Platform SDK: Interprocess Communications |
The Microsoft® Win32® API supports both anonymous pipes and named pipes. Anonymous pipes require less overhead than named pipes, but offer limited services.
The term pipe, as used here, implies that a pipe is used as an information conduit. Conceptually, a pipe has two ends. A one-way pipe allows the process at one end to write to the pipe, and allows the process at the other end to read from the pipe. A two-way (or duplex) pipe allows a process to read and write from its end of the pipe.