Is this possible?

[wallace]

I want to have a program start up another (or 2 programs) in different threads so that I have them all running at the same time. The thing is they have to be able to communicate with each other. My idea is to make a stack in the main program and pass a pointer to each one through the $COMMAND variable. The idea is simple, but from tests that I have done it seems like FreeBasic is too strongly typed. I pass the pointer(s) as strings in command. Then I comvert the $command string to a long and then try to assign a Stack pointer to that. Freebasic won't let me do that. Some of the tests that I did gave me an implicit convertion warning and problems when I tried to push and pop and some just wouldn't compile. Is there a way to do this or am I screwed here? If it's not possible I have a request for a feature. Maybe have a command line that allows the compiler to be weakly typed.

[red_Marvin]

dim foo as sometype ptr
foo=cast(sometype ptr, bar)
bar can be anything

[wallace]

That seems too simple. Thanks, how come I never knew about the cast command I wonder. Hmm.

[LooseCaboose]

Threads or processes? Threads share the global data space so you make any data that needs to be shared global and then use mutex/semaphore locks to control access to it between the threads.

If you are using separate processes then you can either pass arguments via $command or you could set up some form of IPC (Inter process communication) such as a pipe, socket or shared memory map.