mutex - Mutex

Introduction

detail/mutex.hpp provides several mutex types that provide a consistent interface for OS-supplied mutex types. These are all thread-level mutexes; interprocess mutexes are not supported.

Configuration

This header file will try to guess what kind of system it is on. It will auto-configure itself for Win32 or POSIX+pthread systems. To stub out all mutex code, bypassing the auto-configuration, #define BOOST_NO_MT before any inclusion of this header. To prevent ODR violations, this should be defined in every translation unit in your project, including any library files.

Synopsis

namespace details {
namespace pool {

// Only present if on a Win32 system
class Win32_mutex
{
  private:
    Win32_mutex(const Win32_mutex &);
    void operator=(const Win32_mutex &);

  public:
    Win32_mutex();
    ~Win32_mutex();

    void lock();
    void unlock();
};

// Only present if on a POSIX+pthread system
class pthread_mutex
{
  private:
    pthread_mutex(const pthread_mutex &);
    void operator=(const pthread_mutex &);

  public:
    pthread_mutex();
    ~pthread_mutex();

    void lock();
    void unlock();
};

// Present on all systems
class null_mutex
{
  private:
    null_mutex(const null_mutex &);
    void operator=(const null_mutex &);

  public:
    null_mutex();
    ~null_mutex();

    static void lock();
    static void unlock();
};

// This will be one of the types above
typedef ... default_mutex;

} // namespace pool
} // namespace details

Semantics

Each mutex is always either owned or unowned. If owned, then it is owned by a particular thread. To "lock" a mutex means to wait until the mutex is unowned, and then make it owned by the current thread. To "unlock" a mutex means to release ownership from the current thread (note that the current thread must own the mutex to release that ownership!). As a special case, the null_mutex never waits.

Dependencies

May include the system headers <windows.h>, <unistd.h>, and/or <pthread.h>.

Future Directions

This header will eventually be replaced by a Boost multithreading library.

Copyright © 2000, 2001 Stephen Cleary (scleary AT jerviswebb DOT com)

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This software and its documentation is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty, and with no claim as to its suitability for any purpose.