Etymology

Syllabic abbreviation of mutually exclusive or mutual exclusionCategory:English syllabic abbreviations#MUTEX.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmjuːtɛks/Category:English 2-syllable words#MUTEXCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#MUTEX

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#MUTEX

Noun

mutex (plural mutexes)Category:English lemmas#MUTEXCategory:English nouns#MUTEXCategory:English countable nouns#MUTEXCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#MUTEXCategory:Pages with entries#MUTEXCategory:Pages with 1 entry#MUTEX

1. (programmingCategory:en:Programming#MUTEX) An object in a program that serves as a lock, used to negotiate mutual exclusion among threads.
   • 2004, Mark Schmidt, Simon Robinson, Microsoft Visual C# .NET 2003, Sams Publishing, →ISBN, page 632:

     The ability to set a maximum waiting time provides another reason why in some circumstances, you might prefer to use a mutex rather than a lock statement.

     Category:English terms with quotations#MUTEX

Verb

mutex (third-person singular simple present mutexes, present participle mutexing, simple past and past participle mutexed)Category:English lemmas#MUTEXCategory:English verbs#MUTEXCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#MUTEXCategory:Pages with entries#MUTEXCategory:Pages with 1 entry#MUTEX

1. (programmingCategory:en:Programming#MUTEX, transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#MUTEX) To apply a mutex to.
   • 2002, Steve Connet, “Re: best way to interrupt a select() call in a (POSIX) thread?”, in comp.programming.threads (Usenet):

     Or you can have a single pipe that is mutexed so each thread can only write to the pipe exclusively. Alternatively, you can have each thread put the finished fd in a globally mutexed list.

     Category:English terms with quotations#MUTEX