The attached file contains a patch to:
 - remove the "just import it" test for pipes from test_sundry.py
 - add test_pipes to expected skips on win32 in regrtest.py
 - remove the "small test program and example" from pipes.py (it seems to me this is best put in either tests or docs instead of the module itself)

It also includes a new test_pipes.py module.  At the moment this covers about 86% of the pipes.py code; I'll try to get that higher, but I wanted to throw this out there for initial feedback.