C#-APP: redirecting STDOUT vs. anonymous pipes: what's the difference?

[kreismaler]

I have some problems to understand the difference of using the STDOUT and using "anonymous pipes" as shown below:

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;

namespace ProcessTest
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            // configure ProcessStartInfo to start some exe and to redirect the STDOUT
            ProcessStartInfo processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(@"C:\WINDOWS\system32\ping.exe");
            processStartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
            processStartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;

            // start the process
            Process process = new Process();
            process.StartInfo = processStartInfo;
            process.Start();

            // read from the redirected STDOUT
            StreamReader myStreamReader = process.StandardOutput;
            Console.WriteLine(myStreamReader.ReadToEnd());

            // close process & wait for user input
            process.Close();
            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

As you can see the program starts some executable in a Process object (lines 11-19). The STDOUT of this Process object is redirected (line 13, 14) and printed directly to the console (line 23).


Questions
1. Is this a so called "standard I/O channel" (the STDOUT) what I am using here to get my output?

2. If question 1 is true, is this so called "standard I/O channel" (the STDOUT) also a kind of "anonymous pipe"? As far as I understood an "anonymous pipe" is just a pipe without a name and used for communication between a parent and child process. I think this is the case between this program (Main() = parent) and the Process object (= child).

3. In this special case: What would be the benefit in using the System.IO.Pipes .AnonymousPipeC lientStream class (available since .NET 3.5) in this progam? The motivation behind this is that I have a more complex program, which works pretty the same way as shown above. Additionally I write some input via the STDIN to the Process object and read the STDOUT and STDERR asychronously to get rid of the race condition problem.
I am not sure if (a) using the "standard I/O channels" (like shown above) or (b) using the AnonymousPipeCl ientStream class is the most reliable and direct way to do make simple i/O with a Process object.


Thanks a lot for your help,
K