[Courses] [FS] a socket + finger question

[Madhavan, Srivatsan]

Hi --

I might be jumping ahead of time, too far ahead - but i am too
curious to know if anyone can explain this. 

I have a .plan file on my home directory (in my school account).
Users withing the same network can finger me, and see the contents
of  the .plan file as well. 

I replaced the .plan file with a named pipe called .plan,
and set up a background process whose job was to pick
a new fortune cookie each time and write it to .plan.

My idea was that everytime somebody finger'ed me, they'd
get a new fortune cookie too. But it didn't work. finger 
behaved as if there was no .plan file at all. Any clue why ? 

--
Vatsan. 

Nobody can be exactly like me. Even I have trouble doing it.