Batov, Vladimir wrote:
" Thread-safety should not be a run-time configurable property."
I think this is somewhat incorrect as absolutes usually are.
Well, I'll probably lose the fairly abstract discussion of general incorrectness of absolutes. :-) I just think that compile-time vs. run-time is a pragmatic choice. Why give the user an alternative with is dubious and likely incorrect? For that reason std::list does not provide operator[] even though it could. Surely, one could come up with his/her design that would "require" such an operator for std::list. Does it invalidate the decisions STL designers made? I do not think so.
That is why I am suspicious of temptations to lump distinctly different functions of scoped_lock, try_lock and timed_lock into one universal blob.
Well, as you point out, try_lock is like a timed_lock with time = 0, and lock is like a timed_lock with time = infinity, so why not give timed_lock both lock() and try_lock() methods as shorthand notation for lock(m, t=0) and lock(m, t=infinity)? The argument for try_lock not having a blocking lock() method, which you seem to stress more often, is much clearer; I'm much more inclined to agree with you there. Mike