Re: thread-safe increment and decrement

From: William Kempf (sirwillard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-01-08 10:18:09

--- In boost_at_[hidden], "Dejan Jelovic" <djelovic_at_s...> wrote:
> I have written a set of smart pointer classes that improve on the 
ones
> provided by boost:
> 
> http://www.jelovic.com/articles/cpp_without_memory_errors_slides.htm
> 
> Now I would like to make these classes portable across 
environments. To do
> that I need a semi-portable way to increment and decrement 
reference counts
> in a thread-safe manner.
> 
> Under Windows I use InterlockedIncrement and InterlockedDecrement. 
But I see
> that boost uses simple ++ and -- even under Windows. Is that thread-
safe
> with the supported Windows compilers?

For now I'd suggest submitting things with out any regard to thread 
issues.  The Boost thread library will address thread synchronization 
issues, and because the interest in this particular sub-area of the 
library is becoming so hot, I plan to submit something to handle this 
RSN (we've got the basis, I just need to polish a few corners and 
provide an implementation for at least pthreads as currently I've 
only implemented in Win32 threads).

Bill Kempf