Re: [boost] Re: Review: Boost.Threads

From: David Abrahams (david.abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-09-23 20:42:43

----- Original Message -----
From: <williamkempf_at_[hidden]>
> --- In boost_at_y..., "David Abrahams" <david.abrahams_at_r...> wrote:
>
> > No, it's just the idea that the condition waits (or sleeps, or
> whatever else
> > you choose to call it) that's really odd.
>
> From another response I gather you find it odd only because the name
> of the concept is "condition", and to you conditions don't wait.
> You're thinking of the "condition" in terms of some boolean
> expression.  But this isn't precisely what a "condition" is... the
> boolean expression isn't actually a part of the concept.
> The "condition" is solely a synchronization object, and as such it
> can and does "wait".  Seems to me that what you'd really prefer is to
> rename "condition", but there's too much historical meaning to do so.

No, I don't think that's it at all. To my way of thinking, there are only a
few things in the system that can wait. I'll try to list all of them, or at
least all I can think of:

the CPU
the program
a thread
a process
a daemon
the user ;-)

I don't really know what a condition is but a mutex is a synchronization
object, and so is a semaphore. I can't see how either one waits.

I'm not pressing on this because I think I know anything about the domain
(well, I know a little, but not much). I'm doing it because there seems to
be a profound clash with my understanding of the English (and computer)
semantics of the terminology. I don't think my sense of these things is far
off from how people commonly think, so IMO it merits some attention.

-Dave