Messages in this thread | | | From | Brad Pepers <> | Subject | Re: Multi-threading | Date | Mon, 11 Mar 2002 16:53:45 -0700 |
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On Monday 11 March 2002 12:36, Dipankar Sarma wrote: > In article <20020311182111Z310364-889+120750@vger.kernel.org> Brad Pepers wrote: > > There was a message posted by Jim Starkey about his experiences using > > threads on Linux and the problems debugging them. It came down to two > > things: > > > > 2. Linux is missing an atomic use-count mechanism which returns values > > like the Microsoft InterlockedIncrement/Decrement functions do. > > Can't this be done using atomic_dec_and_test() and the likes ? > Google tells me that windoze InterlockedIncrement/Decrement stuff > does the almost same thing. Why can't refcounting be > implemented using just atomic_inc/dec and/or atomic_inc/dec_and_test ?
The atomic_dec_and_test certainly handles the most often used case and is good enough. Apparently it would be nice to have the value back sometimes too though.
The atomic_inc_and_test is not much good though since the case you most often want to track is the 0 to 1 transition and not -1 to 0!
-- Brad Pepers brad@linuxcanada.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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