C++ Pipe ReadFile function set timeout in Windows XP

Question

Is there a way to perform ReadFile with timeout in Windows XP?

If not, is there a way to break the pipe from other thread?

Answer 1

Set up an asynchronous ReadFile using Overlapped I/O. You can then use CancelIOEx to cancel the read at any time.

Answer 2

Assuming you're talking about a named pipe, the usual way is to do an overlapped read, and specify a timeout when you call WaitForSingleObject (or WaitForMultipleObjects). When/if the timeout expires, the wait will return WAIT_TIMEOUT instead of WAIT_OBJECT_0.