Question

The difference between a named pipe and a regular file in Unix is that
1. Unlike a regular file, named pipe is a special file
2. The data in a pipe is transient, unlike the content of a regular file
3. Pipes forbid random accessing, while regular files do allow this.
4. All of the above

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 4 : All of the above

Option 1: TRUE

Named pipe (FIFO) is a kind of file that has no contents on the file system, but we can use all the system calls associated with it i.e. open, read, write, close. Whereas Regular file has contents like ASCII (human-readable) text, executable program binaries, program data, and more.

Option 2: TRUE

Named pipe does nothing until some process reads and writes to it. It does not take any space on

the hard disk (except a little bit of meta information), it does not use the CPU. You can redirect almost

everything using named pipe. Whereas Regular file takes a fixed space and not much transient as pipe.

Option 3: TRUE

The kernel maintains exactly one pipe object for each FIFO special file that is opened by at least one

process. So, pipe doesn’t allow random accessing, while regular files do allow this

Since 1, 2 and options are true therefore option 4 is correct