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In bf(C++) multi threading may be implemented at various levels of abstraction. In
general the highest level of abstraction which is available to implement a
multi-threaded problem should be used. Not so much because it's often simpler
than using lower levels of abstraction, but because higher levels of
abstraction are usually semantically closer to the original problem
description, resulting in code which is easier to understand and therefore
easier to maintain. Also, high-abstraction classes also provide exception
safety and prevent the occurrence of memory leaks.
bf(C++)'s main tool for creating multi-threaded programs is the class
tt(std::thread), and some examples of its use have already been shown at the
beginning of this chapter.
Characteristics of individual threads can be queried from the
tt(std::this_thread) namespace. Also, tt(std::this_thread) offers some control
over the behavior of an individual thread.
To synchronize access to shared data bf(C++) offers em(mutexes) (implemented
by the class tt(std::mutex)) and em(condition variables) (implemented by the
class tt(std::condition_variable)).
Members of these classes may throw tt(system_error) objects (cf. section
ref(SYSTEMERROR)) when encountering a low-level error condition.
COMMENT(
Thread-local storage isn't the only change to the concurrency support in the
core language: There's also a brand new multi-threading aware memory model,
with support for atomic operations.
The New Memory Model and Atomic Operations
Sticking to using locks and condition variables to protect your data, you
won't need to worry about the memory model. The memory model guarantees to
protect your data from race conditions-if you use locks correctly. You'll get
undefined behavior if you don't.
If you're working at a really low-level and providing high-performance library
facilities, then it's important to know the details -which are too complicated
to go into here. For now, it's enough to know that C++11 has a set of atomic
types corresponding to the built-in integer types and void pointers -and a
template std::atomic<>-which can be used to create an atomic version of a
simple user-defined type. You can look up the relevant documentation for the
details.
END)
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