#include <CMutex.h>
class CMutexAttr {
void setShared();
void setUnshared();
bool isShareable();
void setType(int type);
int getType();
};
class CMutex {
CMutex();
CMutex(pthread_mutexattr_t& attributes);
CMutex(CMutexAttr& attributes);
void lock();
bool trylock();
void unlock();
};
The pthreads threading library provides several synchorization primitives. The simplest is a Mutual Exclusion (Mutex) primitive. A mutex can be used as a guard for critical regions of code (critical regions of code are sections of code that are shared between threads but which can only safely be executed by one thread at a time). Or for guards of data structure arguments that are not inherently thread-atomic.
A mutex can be locked by one thread at a time, if a thread attempts to lock a mutex it will block until the mutex is unlocked. A locked mutex can be unlocked only by the thread that has it locked.
Linux mutexes come in a three flavors; PTHREAD_MUTEX_FAST_NP which have very little error checking associated with them and once locked may not be locked again the same thread PTHREAD_MUTEX_RECURSIVE_NP which can be thought of as a counting mutex (the same thread can lock the mutex several times, and to actually unlock the mutex it must be unlocked as many times as it was locked). PTHREAD_MUTEX_ERRORCHECK_NP mutexes have extensive error checking at the cost of performance. The NP in these symbols imply that these types are not POSIX standard.
Mutexes may also have sharing attributes. A shared mutex can live in a shared memory section that is in the address space of several processes and can synchrnoize between processes that have access to the Mutex, while an unshared mutex can only synchronize threads within the same process.
CMutex();
Constructs a mutex with default attributes.
CMutex(pthread_mutexattr_t& attributes);
Constructs a mutex with the attributes defined by the
raw pthread attributes parameter.
CMutex(CMutexAttr& attributes);
Constructs a mutex with the attributes defined by the
CMutexAttr encapsualted
attributes. See
PUBLIC VARIABLES, TYPES and CONSTANTS
below for more information about CMutexAttr
objects.
void lock();
Locks the mutex. If the mutex is currently locked by another thread, the calling thread is placed at the back of the mutex wait queue and blocked until it is its turn to obtain the lock.
If the thread is already locked by the calling thread, and the mutex is a recursive mutex, the lock count is incremented and the method returns immediately. If, in this case, the mutex is not a recursive mutex, the method behavior is not defined.
bool trylock();
Attempts to lock the mutex. If successful, the method returns true and the thread holds the mutex lock. If the mutex is already locked by another thread, returns false but does not block.
See lock for behavior if the
mutex is already locked by the calling thread.
void unlock();
Unlocks the mutex. To call this, the thread must hold the lock.
If the mutex is not recursive and there is are threads blocked on the mutex, the one blocked longest ago is atomically granted the mutex and scheduled to run. Note that scheduling the process to run does not mean the thread immediately runs.
If the mutex is recursive, the lock count is decremented and, if zero, the mutex is released by the thread. If the mutex is released, and there are thread blocked on the mutex, the one blocked longest ago is atomically granted the mutex and scheduled to run.
Mutex attributes can be set at construction time. This is done
either by configuring a raw pthread_mutexattr_t and
configuring it via the normal pthread functions, or by creating a
CMutexAttr object and using its methods to
configuring it.
CMutex has constructors that accept references
to either object and use those references to set the attributes of the
pthread mutex it wraps.
Below are methods defined CMutexAttr objects.
void setShared();
Sets the attribute such that a created mutex can be shared between processes.
void setUnshared();
Sets the attributes such that a created mutex must be process private.
bool isShareable();
Returns true if the attributes would create a shareable mutex.
void setType(int type);
Sets the mutex type see
DESCRIPTION above for legal values
for the type parameter.
int getType();
Returns the current type for the attribute block.