[Help-bash] Creating an anonymous pipe for later use

[Russell Lewis]

I'm looking for a way to create an anonymous pipe in a bash script, 
which I can later attach to various processes - analogous to the pipe() 
call in a C program.

I'm hoping for some sort of command (I'll call it "pipe" in this email) 
which would call pipe(), and then assign the two file descriptors to 
variables.  This would allow syntax like the following:
    pipe {read_end} {write_end}
    cmd1 >${write_end} &
    cmd2 <${read_end}  &
    exec -<${write_end}
    exec -<${read_end}

I know that you can do something close to this with a named pipe - 
however Linux's support for named pipes is less robust than its support 
for anonymous pipes.  I've done a lot of experimentation with them, and 
have come to the conclusion that I should use anonymous pipes if at all 
possible.  (I can give details in a separate email if anyone is interested.)

So, does Bash have any way to do this?  I've Googled a lot, and as far 
as I can tell, Bash doesn't support this...but I was hoping that the 
experts might know something that I haven't discovered.

Thanks!
    Russ