Re: Thread-safe reference counts.

I have some code where objects are dynamically allocated by some
thread, and then used by multiple threads and freed when they are no
longer needed. I think that reference counting is the most appropriate
way to handle this in my situation.

However, my code currently has a very obvious problem in it. Here is
how I have reference counting implemented for my objects, basically
(sorry about any errors I am typing this here in this message):

=== BEGIN CODE ===

class A {
public:
 A ();
 void AddRef ();
 void Release ();
private:
 ~A ();
 int refs_; // reference count
 pthread_mutex_t mtx_; // protects refs_
};

// constructor inits reference count to 1
A::A ()
 : refs_(1), mtx_(PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER)
{
}