IPC Path Encoder

This project demonstrates an Inter-Process Communication (IPC) system implementing a Producer-Consumer model utilizing shared memory and semaphores to enable communication between multiple processes.

Program consists of three main processes:

• Process 1: Reads a directory path from the user and sends file paths to Process 2.
• Process 2: Encodes received paths into a hexadecimal format and forwards them to Process 3.
• Process 3: Stores the received encoded paths in a file.

Signal Controls

Through signal handling, the user can:

• Terminate the entire application (SIGUSR1) by sending it to any process.
• Pause (SIGQUIT) and resume (SIGCONT) execution, sent to worker processes.
• Enable or disable encoding (SIGUSR2), sent to worker processes.

System Requirements

This program is designed to run on Linux or macOS.

If you are using Windows, you need to run it inside a Linux virtual machine (e.g. VirtualBox).

Technical Requirements

• C compiler

Installation & Usage

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/alaszmigiel/IPC-File-Processor.git
cd IPC-File-Processor

2. Compile the program:

make

3. Run the program:

make run

4. Control execution with signals:

Open a new terminal window and use the following commands to control the process:

kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>   # Terminate the entire application (can be sent to any process)
kill -SIGQUIT <worker_pid>  # Pause execution (sent to worker processes)
kill -SIGCONT <worker_pid>  # Resume execution (sent to worker processes)
kill -SIGUSR2 <worker_pid>  # Toggle encoding mode (sent to worker processes)

5. Clean up (Remove compiled files):

To remove all generated object files (.o) and binaries, run:

make clean