launching on Wintel/inter-process communication

[Scott Rossi]

Recently, "Richard Gaskin"  wrote:

>> I think this in general is an under-appreciated and under-explored
>> approach.  I have seen this used as IPC in a mixed Windows & Linux
>> environment using SAMBA.  You might want to see if directory polling is
>> faster.  And watch out for the file being in use.
> 
> By directory polling, do you mean checking the existence of a file rather
> than its contents?  That's the approach I took, much faster than always
> accessing the file.

I wanted to ask something about this method.  I assume your setup involves
creating a file while things are happening, and then removing the file when
the app/s are done?

I've avoided this technique simply because I've never been able to figure
how to account for a crashed process and a leftover file.  If your app
crashes (rare, I know) and your temporary file is still present, how do you
distinguish between "current" file versus a leftover?

Thanks & Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
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