Unix sockets provide local IPC with explicit naming and access rules
Unix domain sockets provide local interprocess communication without IP addresses, TCP ports, or an external network route. They still use kernel socket facilities, buffers, scheduling, and an application protocol. A pathname socket exposes a filesystem name, but Unix sockets can also be unnamed, and Linux supports abstract names. These naming forms have different access rules, so “a Unix socket is just a protected file” is incomplete. ...