Interprocess communication


Files: reading or writing files shared with other processes

Pipes: a bidirectional channel between a parent and child process. The pipe(2) system call returns a pair of file descriptors representing the pipe endpoints, which can then be connected between a parent and child process or two children.

Signals: a set of standard event notifications, some usually delivered from the OS to a process, but also delivered from one process to another using the kill(2) system call.

Shared memory: a memory region shared by multiple processes.

Network sockets or UNIX-domain sockets: a way for processes to rendezvous over the network (even across machines) or through a conventional pathname (on the same machine).

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Steve VanDevender
Last modified: Thu Jul 5 14:29:59 PDT 2007