I've written an implementation of the reader-writers problem using shared_timed_mutex of C++14. In my opinion the following code should cause the Writer to starve since too many reader threads are working on the database (in this example a simple array) all the time: The writer has no chance to acquire the lock.
mutex cout_mtx; // controls access to standard output
shared_timed_mutex db_mtx; // controls access to data_base
int data_base[] = { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 };
const static int NR_THREADS_READ = 10;
const static int NR_THREADS_WRITE = 1;
const static int SLEEP_MIN = 10;
const static int SLEEP_MAX = 20;
void read_database(int thread_nr) {
shared_lock<shared_timed_mutex> lck(db_mtx, defer_lock); // create a lock based on db_mtx but don't try to acquire the mutex yet
while (true) {
// generate new random numbers
std::random_device r;
std::default_random_engine e(r());
std::uniform_int_distribution<int> uniform_dist(SLEEP_MIN, SLEEP_MAX);
std::uniform_int_distribution<int> uniform_dist2(0, 5);
int sleep_duration = uniform_dist(e); // time to sleep between read requests
int read_duration = uniform_dist(e); // duration of reading from data_base
int cell_number = uniform_dist2(e); // what data cell will be read from
int cell_value = 0;
// wait some time before requesting another access to the database
this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(sleep_duration));
if (!lck.try_lock()) {
lck.lock(); // try to get the lock in blocked state
}
// read data
cell_value = data_base[cell_number];
lck.unlock();
}
}
void write_database(int thread_nr) {
unique_lock<shared_timed_mutex> lck(db_mtx, defer_lock); // create a lock based on db_mtx but don't try to acquire the mutex yet
while (true) {
// generate new random numbers
std::random_device r;
std::default_random_engine e(r());
std::uniform_int_distribution<int> uniform_dist(SLEEP_MIN, SLEEP_MAX);
std::uniform_int_distribution<int> uniform_dist2(0, 5);
int sleep_duration = uniform_dist(e); // time to sleep between write requests
int read_duration = uniform_dist(e); // duration of writing to data_base
int cell_number = uniform_dist2(e); // what data cell will be written to
// wait some time before requesting another access to the database
this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(sleep_duration));
// try to get exclusive access
cout_mtx.lock();
cout << "Writer <" << thread_nr << "> requesting write access." << endl;
cout_mtx.unlock();
if (!lck.try_lock()) {
lck.lock(); // try to get the lock in blocked state
}
// write data
data_base[cell_number] += 1;
lck.unlock();
}
}
I added some output to standard output when a thread is reading, writing, trying to acquire the lock either in blocked mode or via the try_lock() method but I deleted the output for the sake of clarity. I start the threads further down in the main method. When I run the program the writer always gets the chance to write to the array (causing all of the reader threads to block, which is ok) but as I said above the writer should not be able to get access at all since there are too many reader threads reading from the array. Even when I don't let the reader threads to sleep at all (argument 0) the writer threads somehow finds a way to get the mutex. How do I get the writer to starve then?
