This routine obtains the value of the contention scope attribute of the thread attributes object specified in the attr argument and stores it in the location specified by the scope argument. The specified attributes object must already be initialized at the time this routine is called. The contention scope attribute specifies the set of threads with which a thread must compete for processing resources. The contention scope attribute specifies whether the new thread competes for processing resources only with other threads in its own process, called process contention scope, or with all threads on the system, called system contention scope. The Threads Library selects at most one thread to execute on each processor at any point in time. The Threads Library resolves the contention based on each thread's scheduling attributes (for example, priority) and scheduling policy (for example, round- robin). A thread created using a thread attributes object whose contention scope attribute is set to PTHREAD_SCOPE_PROCESS contends for processing resources with other threads within its own process that also were created with PTHREAD_SCOPE_PROCESS. It is unspecified how such threads are scheduled relative to threads in other processes or threads in the same process that were created with PTHREAD_SCOPE_SYSTEM contention scope. A thread created using a thread attributes object whose contention scope attribute is set to PTHREAD_SCOPE_SYSTEM contends for processing resources with other threads in any process that also were created with PTHREAD_SCOPE_SYSTEM. Note that the value of the contention scope attribute of a particular thread attributes object does not necessarily correspond to the actual scheduling contention scope of any existing thread in your multithreaded program.