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plumbing n.
[Unix] Term used for shell code, so called
because of the prevalence of `pipelines' that feed the output of
one program to the input of another. Under Unix, user utilities
can often be implemented or at least prototyped by a suitable
collection of pipelines and temp-file grinding encapsulated in a
shell script; this is much less effort than writing C every time,
and the capability is considered one of Unix's major winning
features. A few other OSs such as IBM's VM/CMS support similar
facilities. Esp. used in the construction `hairy plumbing'
(see hairy). "You can kluge together a basic spell-checker
out of sort(1), comm(1), and tr(1) with a
little plumbing." See also tee.
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