Pipe output from program which only outputs to a file `pico2wave` only supports outputting to a file (edit: with extension `.wav`). How can I coerce the output into a pipe for `aplay`, without cleaning up any named pipes or temporary files or a wrapper script? Ie, `pico2wave -w tmp.wav "test" && aplay tmp.wav && rm tmp.wav` creates a temporary file, and is thus not what I'm looking for as a solution.

A note on the general solution: to many programs which require a filename you can give the path `/dev/stdout` (a link to `/proc/self/fd/1`, assuming said files exist) and they will happily send their output to `stdout`. One may also use process substitution in `bash` with `cat`, ie `foo -f >(cat) args | bar` (thanks, g-man).

Because `pico2wave` checks the file extension, a possible solution is to symlink `/dev/stdout` to a path with the appropriate extension, ideally somewhere such as `/var/local/`. This does create an extra file, but not per process: `ln -s /dev/stdout /var/local/pico2wave.wav`, then `pico2wave -w /var/local/pico2wave.wav "test" | aplay` works.