Communicating With Another Process

Communication between processes must use one of the architected methods provided by OS/2, since the operating system by default prohibits different processes from accessing the same resources. For this reason, communication between processes is slightly more complex than communication between threads, but requires less care on the part of the programmer to ensure synchronization and data integrity.

The mechanisms provided by OS/2 for interprocess communication are:

  • Presentation Manager messages
  • Shared memory
  • Queues
  • Pipes (both named and anonymous)
  • Atoms
  • Dynamic data exchange (DDE).

    Each of these mechanisms is explained in detail in the IBM OS/2 Version 2.0 Application Design Guide, and simple examples are given in the following sections.


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