46SYSTEM V MESSAGE QUEUES
This chapter describes System V message queues. Message queues allow processes to exchange data in the form of messages. Although message queues are similar to pipes and FIFOs in some respects, they also differ in important ways:
• The handle used to refer to a message queue is the identifier returned by a call to msgget(). These identifiers are not the same as the file descriptors used for most other forms of I/O on UNIX systems.
• Communication via message queues is message-oriented; that is, the reader receives whole messages, as written by the writer. It is not possible to read part of a message, leaving the remainder in the queue, or to read multiple messages at a time. This contrasts with pipes, which provide an ...
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