From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2006-01-27T04:30:07+09:00
Subject: Re: threading sync

On Jan 25, 2006, at 5:28 AM, Erik Veenstra wrote:

>> My question is that do I really need mutex?
>
> No, you don't.
>
> You could as well use Thread.exclusive. This prevents other,
> excisting threads from being run. If the given block can't get
> blocked (e.g. by IO), it's much faster then Mutex.

No, Thread.exclusive (which uses Thread.critical) does not prevent  
other threads from being run.  It prevents them from being scheduled  
automatically.  You can still switch threads manually while  
Thread.critical is true.

$ cat exclusive.rb
require 'thread'

Thread.exclusive do
   Thread.new { sleep 10 }
   puts 'should be instant'
end

$ time ruby exclusive.rb
should be instant

real    0m10.061s
user    0m0.016s
sys     0m0.013s
$ cat mutex.rb
require 'thread'

m = Mutex.new

m.synchronize do
   Thread.new do
     m.synchronize do sleep 10 end
   end
   puts 'should be instant'
end

$ time ruby mutex.rb
should be instant

real    0m0.060s
user    0m0.016s
sys     0m0.014s


-- 
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://segment7.net
This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant

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