Windows® via C/C++, Fifth Edition

Slim Reader-Writer Locks

An SRWLock has the same purpose as a simple critical section: to protect a single resource against access made by different threads. However, unlike a critical section, an SRWLock allows you to distinguish between threads that simply want to read the value of the resource (the readers) and other threads that are trying to update this value (the writers). It should be possible for all readers to access the shared resource at the same time because there is no risk of data corruption if you only read the value of a resource. The need for synchronization begins when a writer thread wants to update the resource. In that case, the access should be exclusive: no other thread, neither a reader nor a writer, should be allowed to ...