GATE CS 2017 Set 1 Q.18 (CS Q.18): Processes, Threads and System Calls

Threads of a process share

global variables but not heap.

heap but not global variables.

neither global variables nor heap.

both heap and global variables.

Official answer and solution

Solution

Identify the shared and private memory segments across threads of a common process in standard operating system architectures.

In a multithreaded process:

Each thread has its own private execution context: thread ID, register state (including program counter), and execution stack (local variables and function activation records).
All threads belonging to the same process share the process address space, which includes the code section (text), data section (initialized and uninitialized global and static variables), and heap section (dynamically allocated memory via malloc/new).

Therefore, threads of a process share both heap and global variables.

Final answer

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