Mutex

[Quell]

Hello
What is it exactly, adn what are the common uses for a mutex?
thx

[NoHero]

A mutex object is a synchronization object whose state is set to signaled when it is not owned by any thread, and nonsignaled when it is owned. Only one thread at a time can own a mutex object, whose name comes from the fact that it is useful in coordinating mutually exclusive access to a shared resource. For example, to prevent two threads from writing to shared memory at the same time, each thread waits for ownership of a mutex object before executing the code that accesses the memory. After writing to the shared memory, the thread releases the mutex object.


Found right here (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dllproc/base/mutex_objects.asp)

[Andreas Masur]

And to get the complete picture...
Synchronization (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dllproc/base/synchronization.asp)