The easiest is to check for the existence of a special file on a start-up if the file not exists create a temporary file and delete this file after the script has finished. Then you can decide to exit the script if the file already exists. This would be a problem if the first started script crashes without deleting a file. Maybe you want to do a double check if the file exists and the process perl.exe is running. This technique is pretty common for *nix utilities to prevent double execution as it is easy to implement but you should be aware this is not very reliable.

UPDATE: maybe you want to read about File locking and implement this in your script as you mentioned the problem comes from parallel access to the same file.


In reply to Re: how to exit if tool is already running by wwe
in thread how to exit if tool is already running by srikrishnan

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.