Struct bitflags::__core::sync::Mutex

pub struct Mutex<T> where T: ?Sized {
    // some fields omitted
}

[−] Expand description

A mutual exclusion primitive useful for protecting shared data

This mutex will block threads waiting for the lock to become available. The mutex can also be statically initialized or created via a new constructor. Each mutex has a type parameter which represents the data that it is protecting. The data can only be accessed through the RAII guards returned from lock and try_lock, which guarantees that the data is only ever accessed when the mutex is locked.

Poisoning

The mutexes in this module implement a strategy called "poisoning" where a mutex is considered poisoned whenever a thread panics while holding the lock. Once a mutex is poisoned, all other threads are unable to access the data by default as it is likely tainted (some invariant is not being upheld).

For a mutex, this means that the lock and try_lock methods return a Result which indicates whether a mutex has been poisoned or not. Most usage of a mutex will simply unwrap() these results, propagating panics among threads to ensure that a possibly invalid invariant is not witnessed.

A poisoned mutex, however, does not prevent all access to the underlying data. The PoisonError type has an into_inner method which will return the guard that would have otherwise been returned on a successful lock. This allows access to the data, despite the lock being poisoned.

Examples

use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};
use std::thread;
use std::sync::mpsc::channel;

const N: usize = 10;

// Spawn a few threads to increment a shared variable (non-atomically), and
// let the main thread know once all increments are done.
//
// Here we're using an Arc to share memory among threads, and the data inside
// the Arc is protected with a mutex.
let data = Arc::new(Mutex::new(0));

let (tx, rx) = channel();
for _ in 0..10 {
    let (data, tx) = (data.clone(), tx.clone());
    thread::spawn(move || {
        // The shared state can only be accessed once the lock is held.
        // Our non-atomic increment is safe because we're the only thread
        // which can access the shared state when the lock is held.
        //
        // We unwrap() the return value to assert that we are not expecting
        // threads to ever fail while holding the lock.
        let mut data = data.lock().unwrap();
        *data += 1;
        if *data == N {
            tx.send(()).unwrap();
        }
        // the lock is unlocked here when `data` goes out of scope.
    });
}

rx.recv().unwrap();

To recover from a poisoned mutex:

use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};
use std::thread;

let lock = Arc::new(Mutex::new(0_u32));
let lock2 = lock.clone();

let _ = thread::spawn(move || -> () {
    // This thread will acquire the mutex first, unwrapping the result of
    // `lock` because the lock has not been poisoned.
    let _guard = lock2.lock().unwrap();

    // This panic while holding the lock (`_guard` is in scope) will poison
    // the mutex.
    panic!();
}).join();

// The lock is poisoned by this point, but the returned result can be
// pattern matched on to return the underlying guard on both branches.
let mut guard = match lock.lock() {
    Ok(guard) => guard,
    Err(poisoned) => poisoned.into_inner(),
};

*guard += 1;