Category Archives: Programming

Having watched Herb Sutter’s C++ Concurrency video, I wanted to try out a few of the techniques for myself. The first step was to write a simple synchronised queue, which he left as an exercise for the reader.  The key feature is that pop() blocks until an element is pushed into the queue – then it returns the element.  This turns out to be pretty succinct using C++11 features like std::mutex and std::condition_variable:

namespace musingstudio
{
  template<typename T>
  class SynchronizedQueue
  {
    std::deque<T> m_queue;
    std::mutex m_mutex;
    std::condition_variable m_wait_for_non_empty;

  public:
    // When an element of T is pushed onto the queue,
    // one caller waiting in a pop() call will be notified
    void push( const T& t )
    {
      std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(m_mutex);
      m_queue.push_back(t);
      m_wait_for_non_empty.notify_one();
    }

    // Calls to pop() will block until an element of T is 
    // pushed onto the queue
    T pop()
    {
      std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(m_mutex);
      while(m_queue.empty())
      {
        m_wait_for_non_empty.wait(lock);
      }
      T tmp(m_queue.front());
      m_queue.pop_front();
      return tmp;
    }
  };
}

and here’s some code to exercise it:

void testConcurrentQueue()
{
  musingstudio::SynchronizedQueue<int> elements;

  std::thread pusher([&]()
  {
    for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i)
    {
      wait();
      std::cout << "Pushing " << i << '\n';
      elements.push(i);
    }
  });

  std::thread popper([&]()
  {
    for (int j = 0; j < 5; ++j )
    {
      int popped = elements.pop();
      std::cout << "Popped " << popped << "\n";
    }
  });

  pusher.join();
  popper.join();
}

Output:

The next item that caught my eye was a template class that wraps an instance of T so that access to it becomes transactional across threads. No need to explicitly take a lock for each group of calls to the object – instead, you express each transaction on on the instance of T as a lambda. A mutex blocks and the command (expressed as a lambda) is executed in the calling thread.  Herb called his example Monitor<T>, but I preferred Sequential<T> as a partner to Concurrent<T> (see below).  Also, I replaced operator() with excute() (in my opinion it’s easier to read).  Typical use looks like this:

Sequential<T> t( ... ); 
t.execute([&](T& u)
{  
  /* perform multiple operations in this lambda as one synchronised transaction*/  
});

So much for the context – here’s the implementation:

namespace musingstudio
{
  template<typename T>
  class Sequential
  {
    mutable T m_t;
    mutable std::mutex m_mutex;
  public:
    Sequential( T t ) : m_t( t )
    {
    }
    template<typename F>
    auto execute( F f ) const -> decltype(f(m_t))
    {
      std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock(m_mutex);
      return f(m_t);
    }
  };
}

And here’s the code in action, using Sequential<ostream&> to synchronise calls to std::cout:

void testSequential()
{
  musingstudio::Sequential<std::ostream&> sync_cout( std::cout );
  auto doPush = [&]() 
  {
    for ( int i = 0; i < 10; ++i )
    {
      sync_cout.execute([&](std::ostream& os)
      {
        os << i << i << i << i << i << "\n";
      });
    }
  };
  std::thread thread1(doPush);
  std::thread thread2(doPush);
  thread1.join();
  thread2.join();
}

Output:

Now that we’ve got SynchronizedQueue<T> and Sequential<T>, here’s Concurrent<T> which provides a way to perform a series of synchronised operations on some object in parallel with the activity on the main thread.  For example, if you need to keep a GUI thread responsive.  I love the idea of pushing a “Done” event onto the message queue in the destructor so that queued work is concluded and then Concurrent<T> returns.  This is also a very nice use for std::future and std::promise – allow the caller to keep the return value as a future, but don’t block until it’s needed.

template<typename T>
class Concurrent
{
  mutable T m_t;
  mutable SynchronizedQueue<std::function<void()>> m_queue;
  bool m_done;
  std::thread m_worker;
  // Assign value to the promise where there's a 
  // non-trivial return type
  template<typename Ret, typename Ftn, typename T>
  void setValue( std::promise<Ret>& promise, Ftn& f, T& t ) const
  {
    promise.set_value( f(t) );
  }
  // Assign void to the promise - trivial void return type
  template<typename Ftn, typename T>
  void setValue( std::promise<void>& promise, Ftn& f, T& t ) const
  {
    f(t);
    promise.set_value();
  }
public:
  Concurrent( T t ) : m_t(t), m_done(false), 
    m_worker( [=](){ while(!this->m_done){ m_queue.pop()(); }} )
  {}
  ~Concurrent()
  {
    m_queue.push( [=]{ this->m_done = true; } );
    m_worker.join();
  }
  // In order to return a value from the operation that we 
  // process on another thread, use async, promises and futures 
  // - we can't just return the calculated value,
  // because then the caller would have to block.
  template<typename F>
  auto execute( F f ) const -> std::future<decltype(f(m_t))>
  {
    auto promise = 
      std::make_shared<std::promise<decltype(f(m_t))>>();
    auto return_value = promise->get_future();
    m_queue.push( [=]()
    { 
      try
      {
        setValue( *promise, f, m_t );
      }
      catch(...)
      { promise->set_exception( std::current_exception() ); }
    });
    return return_value;
 }
};

Here’s some code to exercise Concurrent<T>:

void testConcurrentReturningFunction()
{
  musingstudio::Concurrent<std::string> words("Concurrent<T> - ");
  std::vector<std::future<std::string>> values;
  // Set off the calculations in a worker thread, storing future return values
  for ( size_t i = 0; i < 10; ++i )
  {
    values.push_back( 
      words.execute( [=]( std::string& in )
      {
        in += std::to_string(i);
        return in;
      }) );
  }
  // Now collection the return values and display them
  std::for_each( values.begin(), values.end(), [](std::future<std::string>& f)
  {
    std::cout << f.get() << "\n";
  });
}

Output: