Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Waiting for an event/condition
• condition_variable and condition_variable_any
  • Details of wait()
  • An example of safe_queue

Before, we talked about the basics of how C++ threads are used, and how threads can protect data by using mutexes, lock_guards, unique_locks, recursive_mutex, and once_flags.

Now, we talk about how threads can wait for other threads to complete tasks.

Waiting for an event/condition

There are multiple ways to check when a condition becomes true:

1. Spin-lock checking.
2. Sleep for small periods of time while spin-lock checking.
3. Use a condition variable which associates with some event, which will notify the thread waiting.

condition_variable and condition_variable_any

Let’s use a case study:

mutex m;
queue<data> q;
condition_variable c;

void prepare(){
    while(more_data()){
        data d = prepare_data();
        lock_guard l(m);
        q.push(data);
        c.notify_one(); // notify a waiting thread!
    }
}

void process(){
    while(true){
        unique_lock l(m);
        c.wait(l, []{return !q.empty();}); // notified!
        data d = q.front();
        q.pop();
        l.unlock();
        process(d);
    }
}

What happens here is that wait(lock, boolfunc) actually unlocks the mutex and sets the thread to sleep.

Specifically, what wait(lock, boolfunc) does is the following:

1. Checks the condition of the boolfunction(could be a lambda like in e.x.)
2. If (1) is not true, then unlocks the lock and sets the thread asleep again(blocked state), waiting for (1) again.
3. If (1) is true, then keeps the lock locked, and proceeds.

As you can see, we can’t simply use lock_guard to perform these operations, since (2) needs to unlock the lock.

Details of wait()

Actually, wait() does not need to check the bool function once - it could check it for any number of times.

In addition, a situation could occur, called a “spurious wake”. In this case, threads can be woken up regardless of whether they were notified, and they will test the boolfunc.

An example of safe_queue

A safe_queue should support the following functions:

safe_queue(const safe_queue& other);
void push(T new_value); // Adds new value into queue
bool wait_and_pop(T& value); // assign popped front() into value
bool empty(); // checks whether any element left

We will have the following members:

mutex m;
queue<T> q;
condition_variable c;

For the copy constructor:

safe_queue(const safe_queue& other){
    // lock the other queue so we can copy their values safely
    lock_guard<mutex> l(other.m);
    q = other.q;
}

For push:

void push(T new_value){
    lock_guard<mutex> l(m);
    q.push(new_value);
    c.notify_one(); 
}

For wait_and_pop:

void wait_and_pop(T& value){
    unique_lock<mutex> l(m);
    c.wait(l, [this]{ return !q.empty(); });
    value = q.front();
    q.pop();
}

For empty:

bool empty(){
    lock_guard<mutex> l(m);
    return q.empty();
}