Re: Singletons and destructors

From:
"Chris Thomasson" <xxx@xxx.xxx>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Tue, 29 Jul 2008 23:36:15 CST
Message-ID:
<g6og5e$250$1@aioe.org>
"Chris Thomasson" <xxx@xxx.xxx> wrote in message
news:g6m5fr$d30$1@aioe.org...

"Greg Herlihy" <greghe@mac.com> wrote in message
news:50d843a1-9252-4c47-b35e-6ae2234c117b@z6g2000pre.googlegroups.com...

On Jul 24, 3:10 pm, JoshuaMaur...@gmail.com wrote:

On Jul 24, 12:58 pm, Greg Herlihy <gre...@mac.com> wrote:

Why call "new" to allocate the singleton in the first place? Wouldn't
the more obvious solution be to avoid "new" and "delete" by having the
singleton be statically - instead of dynamically - allocated? In fact,
the "classic" singleton pattern takes such an approach:


I'd suggest seeing the FAQ, and the static deinitialization order
fiasco. As others have said in this thread, it's not a simple problem
with a simple solution, especially in multithreaded environments.


Anyone who follows your suggestion and reads the C++ FAQ - will learn
that there is no such thing as the "static deinitialization order
fiasco" in C++ (at least as far as the FAQ is concerned). After all,
the destruction of static objects is well-defined (static objects are
destroyed in the reverse order of their construction.)

[...]

Joshua mentioned multi-threaded environment; the singleton code you posted
is NOT thread-safe. You have several issues to deal with, and AFAICT you
addressed absolutely none of them...


ARGHGHGH!

Here is an atomically thread-safe singleton implementation using pthreads,
x86, MSVC and
the double-checked locking pattern:
___________________________________________________________________________

template<typename T>
struct singleton {
 static T* instance() {
   static T* volatile this_ptr = NULL;
   T* ptr = (T*)atomic::ldptr_acq((void* volatile*)&this_ptr);
   if (! ptr) {
     static pthread_mutex_t this_mtx = PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER;
     mutex_guard lock(&this_mtx);
     if (! (ptr = this_ptr)) {
       static T this_instance;

       ptr = this_ptr = (T*)atomic::stptr_rel(
         (void* volatile*)&this_ptr, &this_instance
       );

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Ummm... There is a "harmless" condition here... Notice how I atomically
store into `this_ptr' and then make an assignment to it! The line above
should read as:

        ptr = (T*)atomic::stptr_rel(
          (void* volatile*)&this_ptr, &this_instance
        );

     }
   }
   assert(ptr);
   return ptr;
 }
};


[...]

Here is the code in full with that error fixed:
___________________________________________________________________________
#include <iostream>
#include <cassert>
#include <pthread.h>

class mutex_guard {
  pthread_mutex_t* const m_mtx;

public:
  mutex_guard(pthread_mutex_t* const mtx)
    : m_mtx(mtx) {
    pthread_mutex_lock(m_mtx);
  }

  ~mutex_guard() throw() {
    pthread_mutex_unlock(m_mtx);
  }
};

namespace atomic {
  __declspec(naked)
  static void*
  ldptr_acq(void* volatile*) {
    _asm {
      MOV EAX, [ESP + 4]
      MOV EAX, [EAX]
      RET
    }
  }

  __declspec(naked)
  static void*
  stptr_rel(void* volatile*, void* const) {
    _asm {
      MOV ECX, [ESP + 4]
      MOV EAX, [ESP + 8]
      MOV [ECX], EAX
      RET
    }
  }
}

template<typename T>
struct singleton {
  static T* instance() {
    static T* volatile this_ptr = NULL;
    T* ptr = (T*)atomic::ldptr_acq((void* volatile*)&this_ptr);
    if (! ptr) {
      static pthread_mutex_t this_mtx = PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER;
      mutex_guard lock(&this_mtx);
      if (! (ptr = this_ptr)) {
        static T this_instance;
        ptr = (T*)atomic::stptr_rel(
          (void* volatile*)&this_ptr, &this_instance
        );
      }
    }
    assert(ptr);
    return ptr;
  }
};

struct foo {
  foo() {
    std::cout << "(" << this << ")->foo::foo()" << std::endl;
  }

  ~foo() throw() {
    std::cout << "(" << this << ")->foo::~foo()" << std::endl;
  }
};

int main() {
  foo* ptr1 = singleton<foo>::instance();
  foo* ptr2 = singleton<foo>::instance();
  foo* ptr3 = singleton<foo>::instance();
  assert(ptr1 == ptr2 && ptr2 == ptr3);
  return 0;
}

___________________________________________________________________________

Sorry about that!

;^(...

This should work fine. Any thoughts?


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