Windows® via C/C++, Fifth Edition

Child Processes

When you design an application, you might encounter situations in which you want another block of code to perform work. You assign work like this all the time by calling functions or subroutines. When you call a function, your code cannot continue processing until the function has returned. And in many situations, this single-tasking synchronization is needed. An alternative way to have another block of code perform work is to create a new thread within your process and have it help with the processing. This lets your code continue processing while the other thread performs the work you requested. This technique is useful, but it creates synchronization problems when your thread needs to see the results of the new thread.

Another ...