mutex

An object in a program that serves as a lock, used to negotiate mutual exclusion among threads.

Noun

  1. An object in a program that serves as a lock, used to negotiate mutual exclusion among threads.
    • The ability to set a maximum waiting time provides another reason why in some circumstances, you might prefer to use a mutex rather than a lock statement. - 2004, Mark Schmidt, Simon Robinson, Microsoft Visual C# .NET...

Origin

Syllabic abbreviation of mutually exclusive or mutual exclusion.

Forms

mutexes

Derived

futex

Verb

  1. To apply a mutex to.
    • Or you can have a single pipe that is mutexed so each thread can only write to the pipe exclusively. Alternatively, you can have each thread put the finished fd in a globally mutexed list. - 2002, Steve Connet, “Re:...

Forms

mutexes mutexing mutexed