Answer by chan for How big is the pipe buffer?

Here are some further alternatives to explore the actual pipe buffer capacity using shell commands only:

# get pipe buffer size using Bash
yes produce_this_string_as_output | tee >(sleep 1) | wc -c

# portable version
( (sleep 1; exec yes produce_this_string_as_output) & echo $! ) | 
     (pid=$(head -1); sleep 2; kill "$pid"; wc -c </dev/stdin)

# get buffer size of named pipe
sh -c '
  rm -f fifo
  mkfifo fifo
  yes produce_this_string_as_output | tee fifo | wc -c &
  exec 3<&- 3<fifo
  sleep 1
  exec 3<&-
  rm -f fifo
'

# Mac OS X
#getconf PIPE_BUF /
#open -e /usr/include/limits.h /usr/include/sys/pipe.h
# PIPE_SIZE
# BIG_PIPE_SIZE
# SMALL_PIPE_SIZE
# PIPE_MINDIRECT