As far as I understand, named pipes are not written to disk but are stored in memory. Here's how I created a named pipe - $ mkfifo pipe21$ grep simple SimpleDoc.txt > pipe21 &[1] 2775$ cat pipe21Very simple doc that contains plaintext. [1]+  Done                    grep --color=auto simple SimpleDoc.txt > pipe21After this, I restarted my system. However, even after the restart, I see pipe21 in my current directory. Why is that?
Why does a named pipe not get deleted after system restart?
pipe;fifo
No they're written to disk. The command mkfifo pipe21 creates the corresponding device on your filesystem. Often times these devices are kept under /dev but named pipes (aka. FIFOS) don't necessarily have to be kept in this directory.excerpt from wikipedia articleThe named pipe can be deleted just like any file:$ rm my_pipeExampleMake a FIFO:$ pwd/home/saml$ mkfifo pipe21Check out the FIFO device:$ ls -l | grep pipeprw-rw-r--   1 saml saml        0 Jul 24 12:22 pipe21$ file pipe21 pipe21: fifo (named pipe)Delete the device:$ rm pipe21 $ ls -l | grep pipeReferencesNamed Pipes - Wikipedia