[fpc-pascal] Inter-process communication, a cautionary tale

[waldo kitty]

On 7/19/2012 03:12, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> waldo kitty wrote:
>> On 7/18/2012 08:48, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
>>> I was reminded of this when somebody was asking about portable signalling APIs
>>> the other day, but I think it's also relevant to discussion of e.g. how to pass
>>> a keyword to a help viewer.
>>>
>>> I am obviously aware of the fact that FPC has an IPC unit which uses a temporary
>>> file, although I have always assumed that that was more to support targets like
>>> DOS that had absolutely no concept of pipes or sockets. But perhaps it really is
>>> the safest choice in all cases.
>>
>> FWIW: DOS does have and has had pipes... otherwise things like DIR | MORE
>> would not work... maybe you mean named pipes? ;)
>
> Yes, I do. And I'm obviously aware that there are plenty of addons that graft
> named pipes (and mailslots etc.) onto DOS.

i never used any of that... didn't need to AFAIK... just regular pipes worked 
fine for the times i needed them but yes, they a much different animals than 
named pipes...

> However I always think of named
> pipes, threads etc. as being primarily OS/2 v1 innovations, although some might
> have been introduced by the obscure Microsoft OS usually referred to as
> "European MS-DOS v4.0".

for some reason i was thinking that unix and xenix had named pipes back then... 
either way, i'm out and apologize for the diversion ;)