Is this code taken from Example of Producer/Consumer with condition variable safe? Me and a co-worker had a disagreement whether the omission of std::unique_lock lock(m) in close() is safe. The line done = true;
is set without a lock. Can the notification get to the other thread without the data being synchonized?
#include <condition_variable>
#include <mutex>
#include <thread>
#include <iostream>
#include <queue>
#include <chrono>
class condvarQueue
{
std::queue<int> produced_nums;
std::mutex m;
std::condition_variable cond_var;
bool done = false;
bool notified = false;
public:
void push(int i)
{
std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(m);
produced_nums.push(i);
notified = true;
cond_var.notify_one();
}
template<typename Consumer>
void consume(Consumer consumer)
{
std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(m);
while (!done) {
while (!notified) { // loop to avoid spurious wakeups
cond_var.wait(lock);
}
while (!produced_nums.empty()) {
consumer(produced_nums.front());
produced_nums.pop();
}
notified = false;
}
}
void close()
{
done = true;
notified = true;
cond_var.notify_one();
}
};
int main()
{
condvarQueue queue;
std::thread producer([&]() {
for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i) {
std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::seconds(1));
std::cout << "producing " << i << '\n';
queue.push(i);
}
queue.close();
});
std::thread consumer([&]() {
queue.consume([](int input){
std::cout << "consuming " << input << '\n';
});
});
producer.join();
consumer.join();
}
close
requires locked ownership of m
while setting done
and notified
. And it isn't about an ancient architecture, it is about modern cached architectures. Without the locked ownership of m
, there's no guarantee that the updated values of done
and notified
are flushed beyond close
's cache line so that they can be read by consume
.
Whether or not m
is locked during cond_var.notify_one()
is not as important. Both are correct and I've seen articles arguing that one or the other is the most performant.
In summary, either of these are correct:
void close()
{
std::lock_guard lock{m};
done = true;
notified = true;
cond_var.notify_one();
}
or:
void close()
{
{
std::lock_guard lock{m};
done = true;
notified = true;
}
cond_var.notify_one();
}
Note, I'm assuming C++17 with the lack of <std::mutex>
on lock_guard
. I could have also used unique_lock
instead of lock_guard
here, but lock_guard
is the simplest tool for this job.