How do I make a critical section with Boost?

Question

For my cross-platform application I have started to use Boost, but I can\'t understand how I can implement code to reproduce behavior of Win32\'s critical section or .Net\'s

Answer 1

Here's a rewrite of your example, using Boost.Thread: I removed the comments, but otherwise, it should be a 1-to-1 rewrite.

boost::recursive_mutex mtx;

void Foo()
{
    boost::lock_guard<boost::recursive_mutex> lock(mtx);
    if (...) 
    {
       Foo();
    }
}

The documentation can be found here.

Note that Boost defines a number of different mutex types. Because your example shows the lock being taken recursively, we need to use at least boost::recursive_mutex.

There are also different types of locks. In particular, if you want a reader-writer lock (so that multiple readers can hold the lock simultaneously, as long as no writer has the lock), you can use boost::shared_lock instead of lock_guard.

Answer 2

With boost you can use boost::lock_guard<> class:

class test
{
public:
 void testMethod()
 {
  // this section is not locked
  {
   boost::lock_guard<boost::recursive_mutex> lock(m_guard);
   // this section is locked
  }
  // this section is not locked
 }
private:
    boost::recursive_mutex m_guard;
};

PS These classes located in Boost.Thread library.