Re: [boost] Boost.Threads, N2178, N2184, et al

From: Yuval Ronen (ronen_yuval_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-03-20 10:54:24

Peter Dimov wrote:
> Yuval Ronen wrote:
>> Peter Dimov wrote:
>>> Hello everyone,
>>>
>>> I'd like to start working on a Boost implementation of my threading
>>> proposal N2178:
>>>
>>> http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2178.html
>> Just some naming comments, if I may:
>>
>> It seems to me the word "lock" is used with different meanings. For
>> example, there's a "rwlock" and the scoped wrappers for it are
>> "read_lock" and "write_lock". Very confusing, IMO. I think the word
>> "lock" should either be used for the synchronization classes, or for
>> the scoped wrappers, but not both.
> 
> I've consistently used the POSIX names. I agree that it's unfortunate that 
> they used mutex and rwlock for the two primitives.

Indeed unfortunate...
But maybe there's no real need to follow the POSIX name so rigidly for 
the C++ classes?

>> The word "scoped" appears only for mutex's scoped_lock, although
>> read_lock and write_lock are also scoped. My opinion is that this word
>> should either be part of the names of all the scoped wrappers or none
>> of them, in a uniform manner.
> 
> I tried the "none of them" approach, calling scoped_lock just lock, but it 
> turned out to not work well in practice since it's better to reserve 'lock' 
> for the variable name. I could've gone with Howard's exclusive_lock, but 
> it's a bit too lengthy and hard to type for repeated use. 

So maybe we should go for the "all of them" approach? scoped_mutex, 
scoped_rlock, scoped_wlock?