Two programs communicating locally.

I came to codeguru just to browse early in my C programming career. I programmed mainly on Linux but I want to move to windows. I'm definitely not the strongest programmer, but I like the challenge sometimes. I'm not looking for COMPLETE answers here, just directions and pointers.

I want two separate programs to run on windows, very simple programs. These programs will communicate locally back and forth by sending irrelevant (at first) data. I want them to be able to detect and send data back and forth. Looking around, I've decided to use sockets. I am new to sockets ESPECIALLY on windows. Can anyone point me to a good tutorial or give me some info to look at that would help me in this programming endeavor.

I have been following these forums for a few months now. This is my first post, so I may have messed up somewhere, but this community seems great. Thanks guys!

Well, sockets are good for IPC but using them to communicate locally (on the same PC) would be an overhead.
Perhaps simple posting/sending user defined messages with PostMessage/SendMessage will be easier to implement?
Or using WM_COPYDATA message?
Another possibility is using File Mapping. Or just a Clipboard...

Have a look at:
MSDN: Interprocess Communications
Using WM_COPYDATA
An MFC Asynchronous Socket Example Done Right

I would be looking at using pipes? These are quite easy to set up and use for IPC.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...=vs.85%29.aspx

Yeah, I want to do it with sockets as I may and probably will expand. The references link will help a great deal. If you guys have any pointers or further references, please let me know!

Try looking at this thread

http://forums.codeguru.com/showthrea...ent-server-app