int MPI_Comm_dup(MPI_Comm comm, MPI_Comm *newcomm)
Because this routine essentially produces a copy of a communicator, it also copies any attributes that have been defined on the input communicator, using the attribute copy function specified by the copy_function argument to MPI_Keyval_create. This is particularly useful for (a) attributes that describe some property of the group associated with the communicator, such as its interconnection topology and (b) communicators that are given back to the user; the attributes in this case can track subsequent MPI_Comm_dup operations on this communicator.
This routine is thread-safe. This means that this routine may be safely used by multiple threads without the need for any user-provided thread locks. However, the routine is not interrupt safe. Typically, this is due to the use of memory allocation routines such as malloc or other non-MPICH runtime routines that are themselves not interrupt-safe.
All MPI objects (e.g., MPI_Datatype, MPI_Comm) are of type INTEGER in Fortran.
All MPI routines (except MPI_Wtime and MPI_Wtick) return an error value; C routines as the value of the function and Fortran routines in the last argument. Before the value is returned, the current MPI error handler is called. By default, this error handler aborts the MPI job. The error handler may be changed with MPI_Comm_set_errhandler (for communicators), MPI_File_set_errhandler (for files), and MPI_Win_set_errhandler (for RMA windows). The MPI-1 routine MPI_Errhandler_set may be used but its use is deprecated. The predefined error handler MPI_ERRORS_RETURN may be used to cause error values to be returned. Note that MPI does not guarantee that an MPI program can continue past an error; however, MPI implementations will attempt to continue whenever possible.