.Net Memory-Mapped Files

An article that introduces the .Net Framework implementation of memory-mapped files and demonstrates how to use them in your own applications and systems. The article discusses and demonstrates, with sample code, how use the types in the System.IO.MemoryMappedFiles namespace which was introduced in version 4.0 of the .Net Framework. The article concentrates on the use of memory-mapped files for Inter-Process Communication (IPC) and demonstrates how to pass/share structured data between two or more processes running on the same machine. The article includes coverage of the following topics:

• Creating a new memory-mapped file
• Opening an existing memory-mapped file
• Synchronizing access to a memory-mapped file
• Writing to a memory-mapped file
• Reading from a memory-mapped file

The sample code used to illustrate the article provides a practical and real world example of the use of memory-mapped files in IPC and includes the MmFile class which encapsulates the functionality to create, open, write to and read from memory-mapped files in both a primary or source process and a secondary or destination process. The full sample source code is available in CSharp and Visual Basic as an optional download.

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