A mutual-exclusion lock that allows only one thread at a time to enter a protected section of code, used to prevent two threads from concurrently reading and writing shared data in a way that corrupts it.
Facts
Core PrincipleA mutex is a synchronization primitive that allows only one thread of execution at a time to hold it, preventing shared state from being modified or accessed concurrently by more than one thread. 2 Connections
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Mutual Exclusion
Wikimedia FoundationArticle text, Dijkstra 1965 attributionQuote, Article text, Dijkstra 1965 attribution
The requirement of mutual exclusion was first identified and solved by Edsger W. Dijkstra in his seminal 1965 paper
2. Wikipedia: Lock (Computer Science)
Wikimedia FoundationLead paragraph, mutex definitionQuote, Lead paragraph, mutex definition
a lock or mutex (from mutual exclusion) is a synchronization primitive that prevents state from being modified or accessed by multiple threads of execution at once.
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