InitializeCriticalSection info  Overview  Group

The InitializeCriticalSection function initializes a critical section object.

VOID InitializeCriticalSection(

Parameters

lpCriticalSection

Points to the critical section object.

Return Values

This function does not return a value.

Remarks

The threads of a single process can use a critical section object for mutual-exclusion synchronization. The process is responsible for allocating the memory used by a critical section object, which it can do by declaring a variable of type CRITICAL_SECTION. Before using a critical section, some thread of the process must call the InitializeCriticalSection or InitializeCriticalSectionAndSpinCount function to initialize the object.

Once a critical section object has been initialized, the threads of the process can specify the object in the EnterCriticalSection, TryEnterCriticalSection, or LeaveCriticalSection function to provide mutually exclusive access to a shared resource. For similar synchronization between the threads of different processes, use a mutex object.

A critical section object cannot be moved or copied. The process must also not modify the object, but must treat it as logically opaque. Use only the functions provided in the Win32 application programming interface (API) to manage critical section objects.

See Also

CreateMutex, DeleteCriticalSection, EnterCriticalSection, InitializeCriticalSectionAndSpinCount, LeaveCriticalSection, TryEnterCriticalSection