Communication between processes is valuable in a multitasking operating system to enable concurrent processes to work together. Semaphores are one of three forms of interprocess communication (IPC), the other forms of IPC being pipes and queues.
This chapter describes how to create and use semaphores. Semaphores enable an application to signal the completion of tasks and control access to resources that are shared between more than one thread or process.
The following topics are related to the information in this chapter: