ocaml/otherlibs/systhreads/mutex.mli

50 lines
1.9 KiB
OCaml

(***********************************************************************)
(* *)
(* Objective Caml *)
(* *)
(* Xavier Leroy and Damien Doligez, INRIA Rocquencourt *)
(* *)
(* Copyright 1996 Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et *)
(* en Automatique. All rights reserved. This file is distributed *)
(* under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License, with *)
(* the special exception on linking described in file ../../LICENSE. *)
(* *)
(***********************************************************************)
(* $Id$ *)
(** Locks for mutual exclusion.
Mutexes (mutual-exclusion locks) are used to implement critical sections
and protect shared mutable data structures against concurrent accesses.
The typical use is (if [m] is the mutex associated with the data structure
[D]):
{[
Mutex.lock m;
(* Critical section that operates over D *);
Mutex.unlock m
]}
*)
type t
(** The type of mutexes. *)
val create : unit -> t
(** Return a new mutex. *)
val lock : t -> unit
(** Lock the given mutex. Only one thread can have the mutex locked
at any time. A thread that attempts to lock a mutex already locked
by another thread will suspend until the other thread unlocks
the mutex. *)
val try_lock : t -> bool
(** Same as {!Mutex.lock}, but does not suspend the calling thread if
the mutex is already locked: just return [false] immediately
in that case. If the mutex is unlocked, lock it and
return [true]. *)
val unlock : t -> unit
(** Unlock the given mutex. Other threads suspended trying to lock
the mutex will restart. *)