http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=240198

beretboy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Does anyone know of a way to detect if there are any previous instances of a perl program running, on Windows?

"Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative" -Unknown

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Previous Instances
by caedes (Pilgrim) on Mar 04, 2003 at 00:03 UTC
Re: Previous Instances
by Cabrion (Friar) on Mar 04, 2003 at 04:24 UTC
    If you don't care about portability, Windows programs typically use semaphores to detect that. There is a perl module that provides access to semaphores. This won't work on other platforms. It looks like the newer Perl's provide semaphores in a multi-threaded build, but I don't know how pervasive they are.