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guard - Auto-lock/unlock-er

Introduction

detail/guard.hpp provides a type guard<Mutex> that allows scoped access to the Mutex's locking and unlocking operations. It is used to ensure that a Mutex is unlocked, even if an exception is thrown.

Synopsis

namespace details {
namespace pool {

template <typename Mutex>
class guard
{
  private:
    guard(const guard &);
    void operator=(const guard &);

  public:
    explicit guard(Mutex & mtx);
    ~guard();
};

} // namespace pool
} // namespace details

Semantics

*Symbol Table*
Symbol	Meaning
T	guard<Mutex>
m	value of type Mutex &
g	value of type guard<Mutex>

*Requirements on Mutex*
Expression	Return Type	Assertion/Note/Pre/Post-Condition
m.lock()	not used	Locks the mutex referred to by m
m.unlock()	not used	Unlocks the mutex referred to by m

*Requirements satisfied by guard*
Expression	Assertion/Note/Pre/Post-Condition
T(m)	Locks the mutex referred to by m; binds T(m) to m
(&g)->~T()	Unlocks the mutex that g is bound to

Example

Given a (platform-specific) mutex class, we can wrap code as follows:

extern mutex global_lock;

static void f()
{
  boost::details::pool::guard<mutex> g(global_lock);
  // g's constructor locks "global_lock"

  ... // do anything:
      //   throw exceptions
      //   return
      //   or just fall through
} // g's destructor unlocks "global_lock"

Dependencies

None.

Future Directions

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

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