PS> Hi!

 PS> I'm currently developing a BBS system, and of course - 
 PS> multinode. This means 
 PS> that there will be multiple threads or processes (depending on how I'll 
 PS> implement it) be accessing the same files! Let's take the message-files 
 PS> and file-files for instance. If 4 nodes wishes to read/write to the same 
 PS> message/file-base (thus, the same file), how do I 
 PS> coordinate this?

Many possibilities.  Two obvious ones: file locking, and client/serevr
(C/S). File locking is like a mutex semaphore implemented by the file
system (slow, but useful if you want multiple copies of your program
running on more than on networked PC (although C/S would be even better in
that situation).

Best: client/server.  Even if it is all within one process,  a
client/server thread relationship will stil work.

I suggest, as the first step,  you design the API (or c++ class) and then
think about how to implement it later (once you've designer a good api, the
implementation may very well deliver itself on a silver platter) .

Maximus/squish use file locking (we had to support dos;  I wanted C/S...). 
You could use msgapi.dll if you wanted (Paul Edwards has cloned a p/d
version with source code...)



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