Inter-process communication approaches

Method	Short Description	Provided by (operating systems or other environments)
File	A record stored on disk, or a record synthesized on demand by a file server, which can be accessed by multiple processes.	Most operating systems
Signal; alsoAsynchronous System Trap	A system message sent from one process to another, not usually used to transfer data but instead used to remotely command the partnered process.	Most operating systems
Socket	A data stream sent over a network interface, either to a different process on the same computer or to another computer on the network. Typically byte-oriented, sockets rarely preserve message boundaries. Data written through a socket requires formatting to preserve message boundaries.	Most operating systems
Message queue	A data stream similar to a socket, but which usually preserves message boundaries. Typically implemented by the operating system, they allow multiple processes to read and write to the message queue without being directly connected to each other.	Most operating systems
Pipe	A two-way data stream between two processes interfaced through standard input and output and read in one character at a time.	All POSIX systems, Windows
Named pipe	A pipe implemented through a file on the file system instead of standard input and output. Multiple processes can read and write to the file as a buffer for IPC data.	All POSIX systems, Windows, AmigaOS 2.0+
Semaphore	A simple structure that synchronizes multiple processes acting on shared resources.	All POSIX systems, Windows, AmigaOS
Shared memory	Multiple processes are given access to the same block of memory which creates a shared buffer for the processes to communicate with each other.	All POSIX systems, Windows
Message passing	Allows multiple programs to communicate using message queues and/or non-OS managed channels, commonly used in concurrency models.	Used in MPI paradigm, Java RMI, CORBA, DDS, MSMQ,MailSlots, QNX, others
Memory-mapped file	A file mapped to RAM and can be modified by changing memory addresses directly instead of outputting to a stream. This shares the same benefits as a standard file.	All POSIX systems, Windows