Question

I have a piece of code that handles the multi-threading (with shared resources) issue, like that:

CRITICAL_SECTION gCS;
InitializeCriticalSection(&gCS);

EnterCriticalSection(&gCS);
// Do some shared resources stuff 
LeaveCriticalSection(&gCS);

In this MSDN page is written: “The threads of a single process [my bold] can use a critical section object for mutual-exclusion synchronization.”

So, my question is: what about the case that the operating system decides to divide the threads to different processes, or even different processors.

Does EnterCriticalSection indeed not do the job? And if the answer is “critical sections are no help with multi-processing”, what is the alternative?

I prefer not to use the Boost classes.

Answer 1

An operating system will not divide a thread into different processes.

EnterCriticalSection is appropriate for programs with multiple threads, as well as systems with multiple processors.