Allow multiple instances, but wait for others to finish?

[jdelaney]

Won't work.Example: Imagine that (while one instance is running) > 2 new instances get started. Now > 3 instances are active or waiting. When the active instance ended still > 2 instances are waiting. No new instance will start running and all instances will wait forever.
 

the array will always have at least a ubound of 2.  If there are any additional, then it's greater than 2.  Not sure what you mean by this.  Only the singleton would require the loop, right?

[water]

Won't work.Example: Imagine that (while one instance is running) > 2 new instances get started. Now > 3 instances are active or waiting. When the active instance ended still > 2 instances are waiting. No new instance will start running and all instances will wait forever.
 

You start instance 1: UBound(ProcessList(@ScriptName)) returns 2.
While instance 1 is running 3 new instances get started. Hence UBound(ProcessList(@ScriptName)) returns 5.
When instance 1 has ended UBound(ProcessList(@ScriptName)) returns 4.
As this is still > 2 all 3 processes remain in the loop.

Or is there an error in my calculation

[jdelaney]

After re-reading the original post, it seems that your driving script should wait for a file, and then initiate another script to do the action on that specific file.  If there is more than one file, start two instances, one specific to each file.

[emendelson]

After re-reading the original post, it seems that your driving script should wait for a file, and then initiate another script to do the action on that specific file.  If there is more than one file, start two instances, one specific to each file.

That is in fact what I do; that combined with water's mutex method now allow two instances to work at the same time; the problem seems to have caused by the way the two instances each saved a temporary file using the same filename for the temporary file; this caused one instance not to finish.

Thanks again to everyone for helping me to sort out this problem. 

 

[jdelaney]

oh, well, just make your temp file unique...set it's name to the date time stamp down to the thousandths of a second.  The odds of any 100 running scripts hitting the same value will be nearly non-existent.

[emendelson]

oh, well, just make your temp file unique...set it's name to the date time stamp down to the thousandths of a second.  The odds of any 100 running scripts hitting the same value will be nearly non-existent.

That works! Thank you!

[water]

To make it more safe add @Computername to the filename (plus the timestamp).

[water]

Or use function _TempFile to generate a unique file name.
This example prefixes the name with the @Computername. Makes debugging a bit easier:

#include <File.au3>
Global $sTempFile = _TempFile(@TempDir, @ComputerName & "_")
ConsoleWrite($sTemPFile & @CRLF)

 

[Exit]

Just use _SingeScript() function. with imode=1

May be found here

Edited November 15, 2015 by Exit