[boost] Re: "Thread-safe", etc. definitions [was: Re: Threads Review]

From: Joe Gottman (jgottman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-19 23:09:53

 David Abrahams wrote:
 [...]
 > * "Thread-safe": this is a term which is well-defined for programs. It
 >   is /not/ well-defined for classes or functions, though the
 >   documentation uses it that way repeatedly. ....

The SGI STL implementation gives a good definition of the minimal acceptable
level of thread safety in a class that may be used in multi-threaded
programs (see http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/thread_safety.html ).  To
paraphrase, it says that  simultaneous accesses to distinct objects are
safe, and simultaneous read accesses to shared objects are safe.  If a class
obeys these two rules, then it should be possible to make a shared object of
that class thread safe by putting a mutex, critical section, etc. arround
any write accesses to that object.

Joe Gottman