6
The One Where Processes Whisper
Interprocess Communication (IPC)
In the previous chapter, we talked about input/output. Most of our attention was on files. Files are one of the first things that spring to mind when people think about sharing data with other systems. Another often-used method is networking. However, there are other ways systems can communicate with one another. Files are great if you want to keep data around for a more extended time. Network connections are an excellent way to connect more directly between systems on different machines. But files and networking are more about the underlying technology to transmit data. We also must decide how to connect to systems using those methods. That is what interprocess communication (IPC) in short, is all about. How can we have two systems talk to each other?
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- What is IPC?
- What considerations do we have to worry about when designing IPC?
- Windows...
