English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Any section of code that should be finished by each process that begins it before another process can enter it is called a critical region.
i'm trying to understand the meaning but it's too complicated. can anyone simplify this? it's from "Understanding the linux kernel" by O'Rilley
Here is the main part of the sentence:
Any section of code that should be finished by each process that begins it before another process can enter it is called a critical region.
What kind of section of code is it?
It's a section of code that:
should be finished by each process that begins it before another process can enter it
In other words, a critical region is any section of code that if a process begins it, that process should finish it before any other process can enter it (i.e., that section of code; that critical region).
{Any section of code}subject {that should be finished by each process {that begins it}rel.clause before {another process can enter it}rel.clause}rel.clause {is called}predicate {a critical region}object.
Perhaps the only really complicated part of it is the nested subordinate clauses:
that should be finished by each process {that begins it}rel.clause before {another process can enter it}rel.clause
In the original sentence the "it" (appearing twice) refers to "any section of code" (the main subject).
The contracted version might be
Any section of code {that has some special requirements}rel.clause is called a critical section.
The special requirements are expressed by the nested clauses extracted above.
