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

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

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. 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".

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

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