are there things I should be aware of then working with named pipes?

• When you write to a named pipe, there must be something reading from the other end or the write will fail.
• You can't loop on a pipe like you might on a file, as after the first read (unless something has already been written (not likely)) you'll get an EOF and the loop will terminate.

The code you've provided should cover the above caveats though, so you should be fine. This node also has some good info on named pipes (and seems to cover a situation similiar to your own).
HTH

broquaint