Subj : Re: SEM_UNDO substitute on windows
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : Torsten Robitzki
Date : Mon May 23 2005 07:11 pm

deepesh.g@gmail.com wrote:
> Thanks for your response.
> I am using semaphores to check if an application is already running
> (application tries to acquire lock on a semaphore and if times out, it
> must have been acquired by another instance of the application). In
> case if this application exits (May be user exits which is very good
> and may be because windows decides that it must be crashed now and
> thats where the requirement for SEM_UNDO) the semaphore operations it
> did must be undone so that another instance of application would be
> able to acquire lock on this semaphore and go ahead with execution. I
> would be happy to get any robust solution for this problem, but somehow
> I imagined that using semaphores would be a good solution (until I
> realize that SEM_UNDO is not supported on windows). Any input is
> welcome.

I'm not used to the WIN32 API but I've heard of others solving this 
problem with a named mute. Have a look at CreateMutex() in MSDN.

best regards
Torsten

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