Reentrancy and Thread Safety

What is Reentrancy and Thread-Savety?

Depending on definition Reentrancy (= Interrupt Safety) and Thread Safety are two different things.

Reentrant: Reentrant functions can be called recursively and can be called simultaneously by two or more processes. Reentrant functions are often required in real-time applications or in situations where interrupt code and non-interrupt code must share a function (see keil).

Thread Safe: Thread-safe code only manipulates shared data structures in a manner that ensures that all threads behave properly and fulfill their design specifications without unintended interaction (see Wikipedia). Thread-Safety is required when using an operating system and functions are called by different threads.

Which Functions are reentrant/ Thread-Safe?

Thread-Safe: When thread safety is required, the developer needs to use thread safe functions. Is many cases thread safety of non thread safe functions can be archieved using mutex fuctionalities.