[plug] Named pipe. Solution to programming problem?

[Mike Holland]

James Devenish wrote:

>>isn't that what a named pipe does?
> 
> Not in a way that satisfies all the requirements I infer from Tim. But
> maybe his requirements are simpler than I imagined.

I don't get it. Whats wrong with a named pipe here?

Tim's daemon writes a character to the pipe. When thats succeeds, it
knows something is listening, generates the rest of the data, and closes 
the FD.
The existing programs read the pipe as if its a regular file, except for
blocking briefly while the daemon generates the data.

We are talking about a FIFO, right? Created by "mknod xxxx p" ?