• Jeff (6/6) Jan 24 2006 I'm trying to learn how to do thread synchonization in D without waitabl...
• Sean Kelly (12/18) Jan 24 2006 On non-Windows systems, the classic approach is to use a condition

Jeff <Jeff_member pathlink.com> writes:

I'm trying to learn how to do thread synchonization in D without waitable
objects like semaphores.

For example, how would you implement the classic multi-threaded
producer/consumer queue?  Where the consumer threads wait (zero cpu) until there
is an element inserted into the queue?

-Jeff

Sean Kelly <sean f4.ca> writes:

Jeff wrote:
 I'm trying to learn how to do thread synchonization in D without waitable
 objects like semaphores.
 
 For example, how would you implement the classic multi-threaded
 producer/consumer queue?  Where the consumer threads wait (zero cpu) until
there
 is an element inserted into the queue?

On non-Windows systems, the classic approach is to use a condition 
variable, which is basically a fancy semaphore.  On Windows systems, an 
event is typically used instead, though as events are somewhat broken 
this can be problematic if there are multiple competing consumers.  But 
waiting isn't required in either case, as it's possible to test the 
variable or event without blocking.  If you're aiming for truly 
lock-free code, look around for a lock-free slist.  A low-level 
implementation is included with Visual Studio, and there are a number of 
open source versions available (though I don't have a link to one at the 
moment).


Sean