[Haskell-cafe] Shared/Exclusive Locks

[Chris Kuklewicz]

John Goerzen wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have the need for a locking object that can provide shared and
> exclusive locks in much the same manner as the POSIX flock() function.
> 
> A thread that acquires an exclusive lock has a guarantee that no other
> thread holds any locks.
> 
> A thread that acquires a shared lock has a guarantee that no other
> thread holds an exclusive lock, though any number of other threads hold
> shared locks.
> 
> My intuition tells me that this could be implemented in terms of an MVar
> somehow.  (At least, I've used MVars for simple locks for quite some
> time.)  But I can't quite figure out how.  Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -- John

STM or IO ?

You need a count of shared locks "S", *Var Word32.

To increase the count "S", you need to hold a mutex "E", *Var ().
So (take mutex "E" >> increment "S" >> release "E") is the the combined
operation.

To decrease the count "S", you do not need to hold a mutex. (decrement "S").

By grabbing the mutex "E" and waiting for "S" to go to zero, you have
acquired exclusive control.  When you are done just release "E".

-- 
Chris