Are Mutexes needed in javascript?

Javascript is defined as a reentrant language which means there is no threading exposed to the user, there may be threads in the implementation. Functions like setTimeout() and asynchronous callbacks need to wait for the script engine to sleep before they're able to run.

That means that everything that happens in an event must be finished before the next event will be processed.

That being said, you may need a mutex if your code does something where it expects a value not to change between when the asynchronous event was fired and when the callback was called.

For example if you have a data structure where you click one button and it sends an XmlHttpRequest which calls a callback the changes the data structure in a destructive way, and you have another button that changes the same data structure directly, between when the event was fired and when the call back was executed the user could have clicked and updated the data structure before the callback which could then lose the value.

While you could create a race condition like that it's very easy to prevent that in your code since each function will be atomic. It would be a lot of work and take some odd coding patterns to create the race condition in fact.

The answers to this question are a bit outdated though correct at the time they were given. And still correct if looking at a client-side javascript application that does NOT use webworkers.

Articles on web-workers:
multithreading in javascript using webworkers
Mozilla on webworkers

This clearly shows that javascript via web-workers has multithreading capabilities. As concerning to the question are mutexes needed in javascript? I am unsure of this. But this stackoverflow post seems relevant:
Mutual Exclusion for N Asynchronous Threads

As @william points out,

you may need a mutex if your code does something where it expects a value not to change between when the asynchronous event was fired and when the callback was called.

This can be generalised further - if your code does something where it expects exclusive control of a resource until an asynchronous request resolves, you may need a mutex.

A simple example is where you have a button that fires an ajax call to create a record in the back end. You might need a bit of code to protect you from trigger happy users clicking away and thereby creating multiple records. there are a number of approaches to this problem (e.g. disable the button, enable on ajax success). You could also use a simple lock:

var save_lock = false;$('#save_button').click(function(){    if(!save_lock){        //lock        save_lock=true;        $.ajax({            success:function()                //unlock                save_lock = false;              }        });    }}

I'm not sure if that's the best approach and I would be interested to see how others handle mutual exclusion in javascript, but as far as i'm aware that's a simple mutex and it is handy.