Re: Singleton_pattern and Thread Safety

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:07:14 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<71261477-7de4-42ec-8f40-aed8fb0f9aab@v23g2000vbi.googlegroups.com>
On Dec 13, 7:30 pm, Leigh Johnston <le...@i42.co.uk> wrote:

On 13/12/2010 18:47, Leigh Johnston wrote:


    [...]

This is your code:

namespace {

Singleton* ourInstance = &Singleton::instance();

Singleton&
Singleton::instance()
{
if (ourInstance == NULL)
ourInstance = new Singleton;
return *ourInstance;
}
}

The ourInstance *pointer* is a global object (albeit with internal
linkage) which you are initializing with a dynamic allocation wrapped in
a function. If you have more than such initialization in more than one
TU the order of the initializations is unspecified.


Just as confirmation that what I am saying is correct I created two
singletons using your method in the files a.cpp and b.cpp and here is
the result:

leigh@leigh-VirtualBox:~/dev/singleton$ g++ a.cpp b.cpp
leigh@leigh-VirtualBox:~/dev/singleton$ ./a.out
singleton B constructed
singleton A constructed
leigh@leigh-VirtualBox:~/dev/singleton$ g++ b.cpp a.cpp
leigh@leigh-VirtualBox:~/dev/singleton$ ./a.out
singleton A constructed
singleton B constructed
leigh@leigh-VirtualBox:~/dev/singleton$ g++ a.cpp b.cpp
leigh@leigh-VirtualBox:~/dev/singleton$ ./a.out
singleton B constructed
singleton A constructed
leigh@leigh-VirtualBox:~/dev/singleton$


That's not the point. The point is that it is impossible to use
the singleton before it has been constructed.

--
James Kanze

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