11.4.5.1 Class stream_locker

The iostream library provides the stream_locker class for locking a series of operations on an iostream object. You can, therefore, minimize the performance overhead incurred by dynamically enabling or disabling locking in iostream objects.

Objects of class stream_locker can be used to make a sequence of operations on a stream object atomic. For example, the code shown in the example below seeks to find a position in a file and reads the next block of data.

Example 11–10 Example of Using Locking Operations

#include <fstream.h>
#include <rlocks.h>

void lock_example (fstream& fs)
{
    const int len = 128;
    char buf[len];
    int offset = 48;
    stream_locker s_lock(fs, stream_locker::lock_now);
    .....// open file
    fs.seekg(offset, ios::beg);
    fs.read(buf, len);
}

In this example, the constructor for the stream_locker object defines the beginning of a mutual exclusion region in which only one thread can execute at a time. The destructor, called after the return from the function, defines the end of the mutual exclusion region. The stream_locker object ensures that both the seek to a particular offset in a file and the read from the file are performed together, atomically, and that ThreadB cannot change the file offset before the original ThreadA reads the file.

An alternative way to use a stream_locker object is to explicitly define the mutual exclusion region. In the following example, to make the I/O operation and subsequent error checking atomic, lock and unlock member function calls of a vbstream_locker object are used.

Example 11–11 Making I/O Operation and Error Checking Atomic

{
    ...
    stream_locker file_lck(openfile_stream,
                             stream_locker::lock_defer);
    ....
    file_lck.lock();  // lock openfile_stream
    openfile_stream << "Value: " << int_value << "\n";
    if(!openfile_stream) {
            file_error("Output of value failed\n");
            return;
    }
    file_lck.unlock(); // unlock openfile_stream
}

For more information, see the stream_locker(3CC4) man page.