In Understanding Basic Tasking Concepts control was defined as the path execution takes among the various statements of a program. In a broader sense, control is the path execution takes among the statements of a procedure and any procedures initiated by that procedure. The programmer specifies the type of control path used by choosing the corresponding process initiation statement.

The control path determines whether the initiating process and new process execute in parallel or by taking turns. If they are executing by turns, the control path specifies when and how often they take turns before the new process terminates. The following subsections discuss the types of control paths that are available.