Global Variable across Multiple Platforms?

As with many of you the latest ruling preventing "hedge" strategies on all US brokers has me modifying my EA so as to comply with the new law. Part of my strategy relies on shutting off my EA after a particular profit goal has been hit. Normally I've done this with a bool affectionately named "win"...no problem.

Now however, the new idea is to take the EA and use it on multiple accounts one for "Longs only" the othe for "Shorts only". However, how do I write the "win" bool so that it can be read across a whole other platform.

I have tried setting it as a global variable, but that only applies to the platform where the EA is currently running. How can I set up that global variable to read (or write) to another platform, ie another instance of MetaTrader running side-by-side?

Any ideas?

Using impossible-to-hit pending orders comes to mind...(Fill comments with data).

Otherwise, inter-terminal coding I don't think is possible without a DLL

Ron,

Thanks for your comments. I am a self taught mq4 programmer, but am curious about DLL programing. Is this something I can learn about quickly like mq4? Does a DLL file pass this kind of program information between two different programs? I don't imagine it would be anything too complicated. Just something like:
if (win)
{
DLL code here
}

and on the other side:
get DLL code;
if (win)
{
return(0);
}

All I really want to do is pass a bool setting on to another platform to trigger a return(0) command.

Is this possible?

I have no experience coding dlls


BUT

If you can find the account copier, it has a way for passing trade data from one physical terminal to another physical terminal. So maybe you can sneak in trade data that way.

I know MT4 has the ability to write any value or values out to a text file, which can be read by any other program.

Can MT4 open a text file and read a value?

Yes, but MT4 can only use files in a specific folder.

I see at least three ways.

Two of them utilise WinAPI functionality in mql code rather than DLL programming - InterProcess communication and File I/O.

The former is partly available in WinUser32.mqh. You can exchange the data between two processes via windows messaging mechanism. Check out MSDN PostMessage, GetMessage and PeekMessage functions.
This one is the most efficient and reliable method. And my favourite too.
WinAPI calls aren't much different from MQL calls except they are to be declared along with corresponding DLLs in #import section.

The second approach is to use MSDN File I/O rather than MQL one to get access to the entire file system.

And finally I beleive MQL file system allows to create and manipulate files in folders located in experts\files. I.e. a call to creates file data.txt in folder experts\files\somedir
In other hand you can mount the same disk to a folder in experts\files in both instances of MT and have access to the same media from both terminals.

Irtron...this seems like a very viable soultion however, not being a programer myself I wouldn't know where to start. Is there someone you can direct me to (yourself maybe) that could write such a program for me?

I thought I could resolve this inside mql but it appears I cannot. And unfortunately we are running out of time as this new law takes affect very soon.

Again all I want to do is exchange bool information (1 or 0) between two different platforms. Can you help?

Of course I can!
I'll send you the details in a PM asap.