Browsing through the older posts I could not find any relevant discussion.
What is the opinon on implementing thread-safe containers?
My personal oppinion is that this would be solving the wrong problem. It's thread-safe data that you need. Which could include a lot more additional data besides a thread-safe container. I'm always joggling (creating small classes) that allow me to do this: struct my_great_type { private: struct ts_data { ... }; ts_obj<ts_data> m_info; } // the one and only way to get access to ts_data // acquires thread-safe lock ts_obj<ts_data>::data val = m_info.use(); //... use val here // when it goes out of scope, lock is released.
Java library has them, for example, and, since extending existing containers to be thread safe using locks is a work each client would have to repeat, it looks like a good candidate for standardized library implementation.
As for more efficient lock-free impleentations (using CAS) Microsoft has (relatively recently) added singly linked lock-free list to Win32 API. There
could you post a link? thanks.
are examples of lock-free implementations of doubly linked STL list using older Valois algorithm.
I would argue that most of multi-threaded programs need thread-safe containers.
I tend not to agree with you (see above). Best, John -- John Torjo Freelancer -- john@torjo.com Contributing editor, C/C++ Users Journal -- "Win32 GUI Generics" -- generics & GUI do mix, after all -- http://www.torjo.com/win32gui/ -- v1.3beta released - check out splitter/simple_viewer, a File Explorer/Viewer all in about 200 lines of code! Professional Logging Solution for FREE -- http://www.torjo.com/code/logging.zip (logging - C++) -- http://www.torjo.com/logview/ (viewing/filtering - Win32) -- http://www.torjo.com/logbreak/ (debugging - Win32)