What is the difference between reentrant and thread-safe?

Can you explain the difference between reentrant and thread-safe functions?

Sure! A reentrant function can be interrupted and safely called again before its previous executions complete, while a thread-safe function can be safely called by multiple threads at the same time without causing data corruption.

Can you give me an example of a reentrant function?

Certainly! A classic example of a reentrant function is one that uses local variables only, like a function that calculates the factorial of a number.

What about thread-safe functions? How are they implemented?

Thread-safe functions often use synchronization mechanisms like mutexes or locks to ensure that only one thread can access the shared resource at a time.

Are all reentrant functions also thread-safe?

Not necessarily. While all reentrant functions are safe to call again, they may not be thread-safe if they access shared resources without proper synchronization.