Communication between applications?

Question

I am very new to programming and have not had formal training in this, so please bear with me if this is a vague question.

I was just curious: how do different programs on the same computer communicate with each other? From my programming experience, I believe this can be achieved by socket programming?

thanks

Answer 1

You can rely on all the different kinds of interactions between processes. (IPC). Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-process_communication

In linux, dbus is used for application collaboration. Outlets are the only way to resolve this issue.

Answer 2

Sockets, shared memory, events / signals, channels, semaphores, message queues, mailboxes. Just do an online search.

Answer 3

You can use WM_COPYDATA on Windows, which is a really easy way to send data between different applications / processes.

And here is a list of other methods that work on different platforms and in different languages.