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Overview of Semaphores

Explore the concept of semaphores in C++20 for synchronizing concurrent operations. Understand how counting and binary semaphores work, their key methods, and their role in controlling access to shared resources, enhancing your ability to write thread-safe programs.

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Semaphores are a synchronization mechanism used to control concurrent access to a shared resource. A counting semaphore is a special semaphore that has a counter that is bigger than zero. The counter is initialized in the constructor. Acquiring the semaphore decreases the counter and releasing the semaphore increases the counter. If a thread tries to acquire the semaphore when the counter is zero, the thread will block until another thread increments the counter by releasing the semaphore.

🔑 Edsger W. Dijkstra invented semaphores

The Dutch computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra presented the concept of a semaphore in 19651965 ...