[Info-vax] Unix equivalent of a mailbox device ?

[Bob Koehler]

In article <0147383c$0$1780$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:
> Say on VMS I have a background process that created a mailbox with a
> systen-wide logical pointing to it. Users can use DCl to write a message
> to that mailbox which causes the detached process to do certain things
> with the received daya. (say the daya is anywhere between a couple of
> bytes to 110 bytes).
> 
> 
> When moving to Unix, what are the equivalent frameworks that one can use?

   Lots of folks will create an IP socket for this, but you can also
   create a named pipe.

   Pipes are used for inter-process communication, similar to the way
   mailboxes are used in VMS.  If you spawn a child process you can set
   up the pipe between them without giving it a name, most pipes are
   done that way.

   To get a pipe that is visible to any process that needs it, use a
   named pipe.  The name entry in the file system is visible to all
   processes, just like a system wide logical name is on VMS.