From: MenTaLguY <mental@...>
Date: 2007-06-09T06:13:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Synchronized attr_accessor

On Sat, 9 Jun 2007 04:55:24 +0900, Nasir Khan <rubylearner@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is about having a instance variable always accessed under a lock,
> if object state (instance variables) are accessed by many threads at
> the same time for eg. a hash accessed by several threads for getting values but some
> operation also adding deleting from the hash. You would want a
> synchronized access to your hash in this case...

Just because access to an instance variable is synchronized does not mean that access to the object it references is synchronized.  Retrieving a hash object via a synchronized accessor does not make it safe against concurrent modification.

There are approaches which will work, but to know which ones to suggest, I will need to know more about the "bigger picture" that this code is part of.

-mental