I have found this in the flat assembler documentation:

"cmpxchg compares the value in the al, ax, or eax register with the destination
operand. If the two values are equal, the source operand is loaded into the destination
operand. Otherwise, the destination operand is loaded into the al, ax, or eax register.
The destination operand may be a general register or memory, the source operand must
be a general register.
cmpxchg dl,bl
cmpxchg [bx],dx
; compare and exchange with register
; compare and exchange with memory"

therefore if the two values are equal what is the use of loading the other value into the destination with which this value is equal?

read better:

if the value in xAx reg is equal the DESTINATION, the SOURCE is copied to DESTINATION. otherwise, DESTINATION is copied to the xAx reg.

A, S, D.
if A == D, D = S
else A = D

Rewrite with particular value if current value equals what is expected (xAx). Otherwise find out what value really is there. Quite common pattern for some multi-threaded code.

Scenario: You want to atomically update some status variable. So you load the value, modify it to how you want it changed, and then use cmpxchg.

You ask, why not just write it directly? Some other thread or CPU could change it (multi-threaded code). Then you change it wrong, because it was already changed, so you have to inspect it again! Any time you use multiple instructions to do it, you're at risk of race condition.

So if the comparison succeeds, it's the same as writing it directly. But what happens if it fails? You want to know why it failed, so that's why it gives you the value that is there now (into *ax).

After it failed, you can retry by changing it again, but this time using the new value you got (in *ax) and trying cmpxchg again...

oh ok, i was tired at night read it wrong. Sorry for the hustle.

you don't have to be sorry. it is interresting to enlight the purpose of this instruction.

i wonder in what practical case i should use it.

anyone have an example code? does it have an other function than thread management?

I guess you can use it with a register destination operand if its purpose fits your algorithm logic, especially if you want to code for size. I expect such situation to be rare, though.

I have seen it many years ago in a code to synchronize execution between multiple threads and thus avoid race conditions. I remember it looked like this: If lock_variable is 0, then the thread will acquire the lock and the lock_variable will be set to 1. If the thread doesn't acquire the lock, it shall wait or perform some other task. In Windows, you would normally use EnterCriticalSection function instead.

He did say "other than thread management"

Okay, so just ignore my previous post.