Single-Host IPC and Sockets

In the previous chapter, we discussed the techniques by which two processes could operate on the same shared resource concurrently and in a synchronized fashion. In this chapter, we are going to expand these techniques and introduce a new category of methods that allow two processes to transmit data. These techniques, both those introduced in the previous chapter and the ones we are going to discuss in this chapter, are together referred to as Inter-Process Communication (IPC) techniques.

In this and the following chapter, we are going to talk about the IPC techniques that, despite the methods we discussed in the previous chapter, involve a kind of message passing or signaling between two processes. The transmitting messages are not stored in any shared place like a file or a shared memory, rather they are emitted and received by the processes.

In this chapter we cover two major topics. Firstly, we underpin the IPC techniques and we discuss single...