Question

I am writing an applicaation where more then one link list is shared among threads. Operations on the linked list is as usual:searching,inserting,deleting,modifying node contents.
I came across ann implementation to keep the entire procedure of link list operation “thread-safe”. http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave/C/node31.html#SECTION003100000000000000000

But was wondering if I caan do it as follows:

lock(mutex)
  link list operation
unlock(mutex)

I.e I associate a mutex with each link list and use it as above whenever I start an operation

Would be gratefull for views

Answer 1

Depends. If your threads will mainly search through the lists without modifying them, it may be worthwhile to implement a reader/writer-lock. There’s no reason to prevent other threads from reading the information as long as none of them modifies it. If however, the most common operations involve modifying the lists or the information in them, there may not be much to gain, so a simple lock/do operation/unlock scheme should work just as well.