Named pipes are a type of interprocess communication (IPC) mechanism that allow data to be exchanged between two or more processes on a computer. They are called "named" pipes because they are identified by a unique name, rather than by a file descriptor like other types of pipes in Unix-like systems.
Named pipes are useful for a variety of purposes, including:
- Enabling processes that run on different computers to communicate with each other over a network
- Allowing processes to communicate with each other even if they don't have permission to access each other's memory or files
- Allowing multiple processes to read and write to the same pipe concurrently
- In C#, named pipes can be created and used through the System.IO.Pipes namespace. To create a named pipe, you can use the NamedPipeServerStream or NamedPipeClientStream class, depending on whether you want to create a server or client pipe.
Here is an example of how to create a named pipe server in C#:
using (var server = new NamedPipeServerStream("my_pipe_name"))
{
Console.WriteLine("Waiting for client connection...");
server.WaitForConnection();
Console.WriteLine("Client connected.");
// Read and write data through the pipe
}
And here is an example of how to create a named pipe client in C#:
using (var client = new NamedPipeClientStream(".", "my_pipe_name", PipeDirection.InOut))
{
Console.WriteLine("Connecting to server...");
client.Connect();
Console.WriteLine("Connected to server.");
// Read and write data through the pipe
}
Once a named pipe has been created, you can use the Read() and Write() methods of the NamedPipeServerStream or NamedPipeClientStream class to read and write data to the pipe.
Top comments (4)
pipe is very powerful. In my work I apply pipe to communicate between VB6 > .NET application
Would it be possible to provide a simple example of that?
I write blog about this here >> naiwaen.debuggingsoft.com/2022/03/... (In Thai), you see source code and git repo.
Thanks! I'll have a look.