This article discusses the undefined behavior that occurs when a C function is called with fewer register parameters than it expects, explaining how mismatched calling conventions can lead to reading garbage values from registers and causing unpredictable program crashes or data corruption.
Raymond Chen continues his series on cross-process reader/writer locks by addressing fairness, ensuring exclusive (write) acquisitions get a fair chance against repeated shared (read) acquisitions to prevent writer starvation.
The article discusses fractal page mapping, a technique for mapping page tables into memory using the page tables themselves. This approach allows the operating system to access its own page table structures through the virtual memory system it manages.
The article explains that when a C++ compiler reports an error about code you didn't write, you should investigate who actually wrote that code. This helps in understanding misleading error messages like "illegal use of ->" when no arrow operator appears in your source.
The article examines what happens when a C function receives fewer register parameters than expected across different CPU architectures, concluding the outcome is always problematic but especially severe on Itanium.
This post continues a series on building a cross-process reader/writer lock, focusing on handling the scenario where a process holding the lock is terminated, requiring recovery mechanisms for the abandoned lock state.