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From: bcw@rti.rti.org (Bruce Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.programmer
Subject: Re: Turbo C or MSC
Summary: Bad choice of words
Message-ID: <3760@rtifs1.UUCP>
Date: 12 Apr 90 02:39:08 GMT
References: <3757@rtifs1.UUCP>
Organization: Research Triangle Institute, RTP, NC
Lines: 30

Sorry to write a followup on my own article, but I realized that
what I wrote was not the best way of saying what I meant - I was
tired and didn't realize that the words I chose could confuse
some people.  In my defense, I didn't invent the terminology;
I was just combining terms from two different areas without
considering that they are confusingly similar. 

In article <3757@rtifs1.UUCP>, bcw@rti.rti.org (Bruce Wright) writes:
>
> As far as Windows goes, there is a _big_ advantage for code that is
> re-entrant, but this is an architectural quirk of Windows and is true
> whether you are in protected mode or not (if a routine is not
                     ^^^^^^^^^
> re-entrant under Windows, you often have to protect it somehow to
                                              ^^^^^^^
> prevent corruption).

The first "protect" refers to the memory mapping mode of the 80286/
80386/80486 chip family (which probably shouldn't be called protected
mode - maybe "memory mapped mode" would be a more apt term, but as I
said I didn't invent any of this terminology).  The second "protect"
refers to techniques like semaphores, which are often used to protect
critical regions in a program (see any book on real-time programming
or operating systems).  The only connection between the two is that,
unfortunately, both unrelated areas of computing use the same word
"protect" to mean totally different things.

Hope nobody was any more confused than I was 8-).

						Bruce C. Wright