I’m trying to start a C# program running, and then give it command from the cmd.exe after it’s started running. For instance, suppose I started my .exe from the command line (C://FILEPATH/my_program.exe). I’d then like to have that program continue running, and then have me be able to pass commands to it that it is capable of handling. In my ideal world this would be something like “C://FILEPATH/my_program.exe run_my_command()” which would execute the run_my_command function, or “C://FILEPATH/my_program.exe k”, which would do something in response to the char k that I’d pre-programmed in. I know that, as I’ve typed, would start a new copy of my_program.exe. I’d only like to have one running while I pass something like that in.
Does anyone know how to do this? Sample code would be wonderfully appreciated. Thanks!!
The simplest solution would be for your second instance of “my_program.exe” to look for an existing instance that’s already running, “pass” the message over to it and then exit immediately.
The usual way this is implemented is via named pipes (System.IO.Pipes in .NET 3.5+). When your program starts up, listen on a named pipe with a given name. If there’s something else already listening on that pipe, send the message to it and exit.