General

Question 1

what is mutex?

Answer 1

Mutex (short for mutual exclusion) is a programming concept used to prevent multiple threads or processes from accessing shared resources or critical sections of code simultaneously. It is a synchronization primitive that allows only one thread or process at a time to access a shared resource.

In practice, a mutex is an object that can be locked by one thread or process at a time, ensuring that any other threads or processes attempting to access the shared resource will be blocked until the mutex is released. Once the thread or process that holds the mutex releases it, another thread or process can acquire it and access the shared resource.

Mutexes are commonly used in concurrent programming to prevent race conditions, deadlocks, and other synchronization issues that can occur when multiple threads or processes access shared resources simultaneously.