Can Events be Inter-Process?

Question

I have created an event in one process and to test, sent the event handle via a pipe to a totally separate process (not a child thread)

When I fire the event in the first, WaitForSingleObject does not detect the event so I am guessing the answer is no unless I missed some trick in the SECURITY_ATTRIBUTES structure?

Or perhaps I need to use a named event and call OpenEvent()?

In this case I cannot use window messages because I am trying to signal a windows service. I could use the pipe, but there will be many of these applications, and I would like to find a "low cost" solution if possible.

Other options like Memory mapped files have even more overhead than the pipe?

How would you do this?

Answer 1

You need to create a named event and open it in both processes. If you have multiple processes listening, you may consider using a semaphore.