Question : Mutex

What is a mutex.

Answer : Mutex

Hmm, there is MuTeX which is a package with musical symbols for TeX (i.e. MuTeX).

But you may also mean a "MUTual EXclusion lock".

     ... prevent multiple  threads
     from  simultaneously  executing  critical  sections  of code
     which access shared data (that is, mutexes are used to seri-
     alize  the  execution of threads).  All mutexes must be glo-
     bal.    A   successful   call   for   a   mutex   lock   via
     pthread_mutex_lock()  or  mutex_lock()  will  cause  another
     thread that is also trying to lock the same mutex  to  block
     until the owner thread unlocks it via pthread_mutex_unlock()
     or mutex_unlock().   Threads  within  the  same  process  or
     within other processes can share mutexes.


This is a copy/paste from a man page in Solaris 5.5. There is much more including example codes. If you can't access those docs let me now, I can email it to you.

Peter ([email protected])