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Subj : Re: deadlock avoidance
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : Dijkstra
Date : Tue Jul 05 2005 01:36 pm

Hi there!

The Giancarlo article is right: A C function using a global or static
variable is surely not reentrant. It may be reentrant if you take great
care not to use this variable simultaneously, which will lead you to
use some kind of syncronization, killing reentrancy to a great extent.

I also agree to the sentence "Every access to shared data must be
guarded with a mutex". It is true, period. You can not assure a C
sentence is atomic enough, not even a simple assignment -- think of
other architectures, not only x86. If you take this to C++, I can count
many cases where "a = b" may take hundred lines of micro-code.

Cheers,
Jose Miguel.

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