🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <199221Jul.155203.11220@quay.ie> chris@quay.ie (Christopher Davey) writes:
> 2 Questions:
> 1. Can anyone recommend a good book on the subjects of either or both of
>     * Shared Memory
>     * Semaphores
>    for programming on a NeXT?

This is a general text and not programming language specific, but very good IMHO

  Concurrent Programming
  Principles and Practice
  Gregory Andrews
  Benjamin/Cummins Publishing 1991
  ISBN 0-8053-0086-4
  637 pages

It discusses program verification techniques 
(pretty crucial to at least informally understand for concurrent programming)
shared variables
semaphores
conditional critical regions
monitors
asynchronous message passing
synchronous message passing
RPC
rendezvous

other topics include: barrier synchronization, fine and course grained
atomicity, on the fly garbage collection, split binary semaphores,
scheduling issues, safety and liveness, client server systems.

like the title says there is in depth theory (well explained not cryptic)
examples, design guidelines and rationale and history/discussion of
programming languages including CSP, Occam, Ada, Turing Plus, SR and Linda
that provide support for concurrent programming - the principles obviously
carry over if you use Mach library routines instead.

it may be more than you need if you just want a simple binary semaphore
and need the NeXT appropriate function name, but if you are serious about
concurrent programming - its a neo classic.
-- 
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Alex Blakemore alex@cs.umd.edu