Comparing Unix/Linux IPC

Question

Lots of IPCs are offered by Unix/Linux: pipes, sockets, shared memory, dbus, message-queues...

What are the most suitable applications for each, and how do they perf

Answer 1

It's worth noting that lots of libraries implement one type of thing on top of another.

Shared memory doesn't need to use the horrible sysv shared memory functions - it's much more elegant to use mmap() (mmap a file in on a tmpfs /dev/shm if you want it named; mmap /dev/zero if you want forked not exec'd processes to inherit it anonymously). Having said that, it still leaves your processes with some need for synchronisation to avoid problems - typically by using some of the other IPC mechanisms to do synchronisation of access to a shared memory area.