Sending Files to a Prior Session

Epsilon's command line flag -add tells Epsilon to locate an existing instance of itself (a "server"), send it a message containing the rest of the command line, and immediately exit. (Epsilon ignores the flag if there's no prior instance.) This feature works in Epsilon for Windows and Epsilon for Unix.

The command line flag -noserver tells Epsilon that it should not respond to such messages from future instances.

The command line flag -server may be used to alter the server name for an instance of Epsilon, which is "Epsilon" by default. An instance of Epsilon started with -server:somename -add will only pass its command line to a previous instance started with the same -server:somename flag.

An -add message to Epsilon uses a subset of the syntax of Epsilon's command line. It can contain file names to edit, the +linenum flag, the flag -dvarname=value to set an Epsilon variable, -lfilename to load an EEL bytecode file, or -rfuncname to run an EEL function, command, or macro.

Spaces separate file names and flags in the message; surround a file name or flag with " characters if it contains spaces. In EEL, such messages arrive via a special kind of WIN_DRAG_DROP event.

In Epsilon for Unix you can use the -wait flag instead of -add. This causes the client Epsilon to send the following command line to an existing instance and then wait for a response from the server, indicating the user has finished editing the specified file. Use the resume-client command on Ctrl-C # to indicate this.

Epsilon for Windows normally acts as a server for its own internal-format messages, as described above, and also acts as a DDE server for messages from Windows Explorer. The -noserver flag described above also disables DDE, and the -server flag also sets the DDE server name. The DDE server in Epsilon uses a topic name of "Open" and a server name determined as described above (normally "Epsilon").

Standard bindings:

Ctrl-C # resume-client

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File Associations and DDE Commands by Topic MS-Windows Integration Features