Re: Mutex in ostream operator - doesn't work

From:
"Christopher Pisz" <someone@somewhere.net>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:08:56 -0600
Message-ID:
<479ea6d8$0$30681$4c368faf@roadrunner.com>
"Hansel Stroem" <hansel@stroem.com> wrote in message
news:479e9bc6$0$25047$607ed4bc@cv.net...

Good evening dear newsgroup (and sorry for cross-posting with .threads),

I am trying to synchronize output to ostreams such as cout and cerr for
threaded logging purposes. And it doesn't seem to work. The blurb of code
below is supposed to do following :

ostream& operator <<(ostream& out, StreamLocker& SL)
{

 if (not_locked)
 {
   pthread_mutex_lock(this_lock);
   not_lock = false;
  }
 else // if locked
 {
  pthread_mutex_unlock(this_lock);
  not_lock = true;
 }

 return out;
}

Rest of code is debugging messages and attempts to get it to work with
flush() et al. Nothing works; output is as mingled as it could be. Please
help me kindly.

Thank you,
Not A Coder.
-----------------------------------------------
#include <iostream>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <unistd.h>

using namespace std;

   static pthread_mutex_t stderr_lock;
   static pthread_mutex_t stdout_lock;

   class StreamLocker
   {
   public:
       bool locked;
       pthread_mutex_t my_lock;
       StreamLocker();
       void InitLock(pthread_mutex_t mutex_lock);
       friend ostream& operator<<(ostream& out, StreamLocker &sl);
   };

   static StreamLocker SL;

 StreamLocker::StreamLocker()
   {
       cout << "Creating StreamLocker" << endl;
       this->locked = false;
       pthread_mutex_init(&my_lock, NULL);
       pthread_mutex_init(&stderr_lock, NULL);
       pthread_mutex_init(&stdout_lock, NULL);
       cout << "Created StreamLocker" << endl;
   }

   ostream& operator <<(ostream& out, StreamLocker &sl)
   {
       if (!sl.locked)
       {
           if (out == cerr)
           {
               out << "LK ER";
               pthread_mutex_lock(&stderr_lock);
           }
           else if (out == cout)
           {
               out.flush();
               out << "*LK OU*";
               if ( pthread_mutex_lock(&stdout_lock) != 0 )
                perror("Couldn't obtain lock");
           }
           else
           {
               out << "LK SE";
               pthread_mutex_lock( &(sl.my_lock) );
           }
       }
       else
       {
           out.flush();
           if (out == cerr)
           {
               out << "ULK ER";
               pthread_mutex_unlock(&stderr_lock);
           }
           else if (out == cout)
           {
               out << "*ULK OU*";
               if ( pthread_mutex_unlock(&stdout_lock) != 0 )
                perror("Couldn't unlock");
           }
           else
           {
               out << "ULK SE";
               pthread_mutex_unlock(& (sl.my_lock)) ;
           }
       }
       sl.locked = !sl.locked;
       // out.flush();
       return out;
   }

   void StreamLocker::InitLock(pthread_mutex_t mutex_lock)
   {
       pthread_mutex_init(&mutex_lock, NULL);
   }

typedef void* (*thread_body) (void*) ;

template<int N>
void* Thread_Body(void* arg)
{
unsigned long cycle = 1;
while ( ++cycle > 0)
{
 cout << SL ;
 cout << "Thread ## " << N << " in cycle ## " << cycle << " speaking with
id " << pthread_self() << endl ;
 cout << SL;
 if ( (random() % 111)==0 )
  sleep( 1 );
}
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
 pthread_attr_t thread_attr;
 pthread_attr_init(&thread_attr);
 pthread_t thread_id;

 thread_body tb_1 = Thread_Body<1>, tb_2 = Thread_Body<2> , tb_3 =
Thread_Body<3>;

 pthread_create(&thread_id, &thread_attr, tb_1, NULL);
 pthread_create(&thread_id, &thread_attr, tb_2, NULL);
 pthread_create(&thread_id, &thread_attr, tb_1, NULL);
 pthread_create(&thread_id, &thread_attr, tb_3, NULL);
 pthread_create(&thread_id, &thread_attr, tb_2, NULL);
 pthread_create(&thread_id, &thread_attr, Thread_Body<7>, NULL);

 pthread_join(thread_id, NULL);
}


What a coincidence that I am studying a very simular problem in a book as we
speak. The authors of "Standard C++ IoStreams and Locals" suggests that you
add the lock and unlock to the sentry object for the stream and use that
sentry object in your insertion and extraction functions. This was in the
context of making custom instertors and extractors for user defined types,
so I am not sure if it is applicable to your desire to implement the
behavior on every type. Unfortuantely, I have not gotten to the part where I
actually add the operation to the sentry object, but its worth mentioning so
you can also research in the meanwhile.

It was also said that, if you call a stream operator << or >> within a
function that defines a stream operator << or >> you invoke the prefix and
postfix operations (such as flushing, skipping of whitespace, flushing of
tied stream, and custom things like the suggested locking and unlocking) the
sentry governs anyway , and as a result create alot of unecesaary overhead,
as well as imho possible problems in your multithreaded context.

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