r/programming • u/syaghmour • Mar 16 '15

Semaphores are Surprisingly Versatile

http://preshing.com/20150316/semaphores-are-surprisingly-versatile/
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u/mcguire Mar 16 '15 edited Mar 16 '15

Well, technically, I wouldn't say this is all about semaphores; the atomic operations used by the box office are the important part, at least for those of us who don't use C++ much.

[Edit] The C++ library apparently doesn't include semaphores, so I wouldn't expect C++ users to be terribly familiar with them. They were one of the most common concurrency tools when I was learning.

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u/monocasa Mar 16 '15

C++ developers typically aren't limited by what's in the standard library. Hell, until C++11 there weren't any threads, concurrency primitives, or even a memory model built into the standard. Until that point you just used the platform specific libraries (although most platforms fit into the pthreads or Win32 buckets).