Re: [Caml-list] Mutex and posix

[Alex Baretta <alex@barettadeit.com>]

Brian Hurt wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Jan 2005, Alex Baretta wrote:
> 
>>I am aware of this. But, if one really needs the timed primitive, one 
>>can always simulate it by sampling the mutex state repeatedly with 
>>_trylock. Unix.select serves the purpose of controlling the sampling time.

> 
> Um, no.  What happens if the mutex is unlocked for some period of time 
> between your polls, but relocked before you poll the lock again?  It's 
> very easy to hit livelock conditions doing this.
> 
> Brian

Of course it is. My solution is only a kludge to simulate an OS 
primitive on a system where it is not available. I am not stating that 
my strategy yields a POSIX compliant timedlock.

Alex


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