ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Pipeline (Unix)

A pipeline in Unix is like a conveyor belt. It's a way to get data from one place to another, by connecting different programs together. For example, let's say you want to put some information from a file, into a database. You could use a pipeline to connect the program that reads from the file, to the program that writes to the database. Data would flow from the file through the pipeline, to the database.