LeaveCriticalSection

A version of this page is also available for

Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R3

4/8/2010

This function releases ownership of the specified critical section object.

Syntax

void  LeaveCriticalSection(
  LPCRITICAL_SECTION lpCriticalSection
);

Parameters

• lpCriticalSection
  [in] Pointer to the critical section object.

Return Value

None.

Remarks

The threads of a single process can use a critical-section object for mutual-exclusion synchronization. The process is responsible for allocating the memory used by a critical-section object, which it can do by declaring a variable of type CRITICAL_SECTION. Before using a critical section, some thread of the process must call the InitializeCriticalSection function to initialize the object. A thread uses the EnterCriticalSection function to acquire ownership of a critical section object. To release its ownership, the thread must call LeaveCriticalSection once for each time that it entered the critical section.

If a thread calls LeaveCriticalSection when it does not have ownership of the specified critical section object, an error occurs that may cause another thread using EnterCriticalSection to wait indefinitely.

Any thread of the process can use the DeleteCriticalSection function to release the system resources that were allocated when the critical section object was initialized. After this function has been called, the critical section object can no longer be used for synchronization.

Each object type, such as memory maps, semaphores, events, message queues, mutexes, and watchdog timers, has its own separate namespace. Empty strings, "", are handled as named objects. On Windows desktop-based platforms, synchronization objects all share the same namespace.

Requirements

See Also

Reference

Synchronization Functions
DeleteCriticalSection
EnterCriticalSection
InitializeCriticalSection