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reentrantmore about reentrant

reentrant


  4  definitions  found 
 
  From  Webster's  Revised  Unabridged  Dictionary  (1913)  [web1913]: 
 
  Reentrant  \Re*["e]n"trant\  (-trant),  a. 
  Re["e]ntering;  pointing  or  directed  inwardds;  as  a  re?ntrant 
  angle. 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  reentrant 
  adj  :  (of  angles)  pointing  inward;  "a  polygon  with  re-entrant 
  angles"  [syn:  {re-entrant}]  [ant:  {salient}] 
 
  From  WordNet  r  1.6  [wn]: 
 
  re-entrant 
  adj  :  (of  angles)  pointing  inward;  "a  polygon  with  re-entrant 
  angles"  [syn:  {reentrant}]  [ant:  {salient}] 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  re-entrant 
 
    Used  to  describe  code  which  can  have  multiple 
  simultaneous,  interleaved,  or  nested  invocations  which  will 
  not  interfere  with  each  other  This  is  important  for 
  {parallel  processing},  {recursive}  functions  or  subroutines, 
  and  {interrupt  handling}. 
 
  It  is  usually  easy  to  arrange  for  multiple  invocations 
  (e.g.  calls  to  a  subroutine)  to  share  one  copy  of  the  code  and 
  any  read-only  data  but  for  the  code  to  be  re-entrant,  each 
  invocation  must  use  its  own  copy  of  any  modifiable  data  (or 
  synchronised  access  to  shared  data).  This  is  most  often 
  achieved  using  a  {stack}  and  allocating  local  variables  in  a 
  new  {stack  frame}  for  each  invocation.  Alternatively,  the 
  caller  may  pass  in  a  pointer  to  a  block  of  memory  which  that 
  invocation  can  use  (usually  for  outputting  the  result)  or  the 
  code  may  allocate  some  memory  on  a  {heap},  especially  if  the 
  data  must  survive  after  the  routine  returns. 
 
  Re-entrant  code  is  often  found  in  system  software,  such  as 
  {operating  systems}  and  {teleprocessing  monitors}.  It  is  also 
  a  crucial  component  of  {multithreaded}  programs  where  the  term 
  "thread-safe"  is  often  used  instead  of  "re-entrant". 
 
  (1996-12-21) 
 
 




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