pipes vs. redirects

I've been using pipes and redirects for a long time and just realized that I don't know exactly how they are different. I just know that if you want to store the output in a file, then you use >. Otherwise most of the time you just use |. Can someone explain the difference between pipes and redirects?

Solution 1:

The both do the same basic thing; they redirect a file descriptor of the process executed. The difference lies in how. A pipe connects the stdout of one process to the stdin of another, whereas redirection redirects from/to a file (> from stdout to a file, < from a file to stdin).