In concurrent programming, a monitor is an object or module intended to be used safely by more than one thread. The defining characteristic of a monitor is that its methods are executed with mutual exclusion. That is, at each point in time, at most one thread may be executing any of its methods. This mutual exclusion greatly simplifies reasoning about the implementation of monitors compared to reasoning about parallel code that updates a data structure.
You can read more about the general principles on the Wikipedia page for Monitors
require 'monitor.rb' buf = [] buf.extend(MonitorMixin) empty_cond = buf.new_cond # consumer Thread.start do loop do buf.synchronize do empty_cond.wait_while { buf.empty? } print buf.shift end end end # producer while line = ARGF.gets buf.synchronize do buf.push(line) empty_cond.signal end end
The consumer thread waits for the producer thread to push a line to buf
while buf.empty?. The producer thread (main thread) reads a
line from ARGF and pushes it into buf then calls
empty_cond.signal to notify the consumer thread of new data.
require 'monitor' class SynchronizedArray < Array include MonitorMixin def initialize(*args) super(*args) end alias :old_shift :shift alias :old_unshift :unshift def shift(n=1) self.synchronize do self.old_shift(n) end end def unshift(item) self.synchronize do self.old_unshift(item) end end # other methods ... end
SynchronizedArray implements an Array with synchronized access
to items. This Class is implemented as subclass of Array which includes the
MonitorMixin module.
Enters exclusive section.
# File monitor.rb, line 186
def mon_enter
if @mon_owner != Thread.current
@mon_mutex.lock
@mon_owner = Thread.current
@mon_count = 0
end
@mon_count += 1
end
Leaves exclusive section.
# File monitor.rb, line 198
def mon_exit
mon_check_owner
@mon_count -=1
if @mon_count == 0
@mon_owner = nil
@mon_mutex.unlock
end
end
Returns true if this monitor is locked by any thread
# File monitor.rb, line 210
def mon_locked?
@mon_mutex.locked?
end
Returns true if this monitor is locked by current thread.
# File monitor.rb, line 217
def mon_owned?
@mon_mutex.locked? && @mon_owner == Thread.current
end
Enters exclusive section and executes the block. Leaves the exclusive
section automatically when the block exits. See example under
MonitorMixin.
# File monitor.rb, line 226
def mon_synchronize
mon_enter
begin
yield
ensure
mon_exit
end
end
Attempts to enter exclusive section. Returns false if lock
fails.
# File monitor.rb, line 169
def mon_try_enter
if @mon_owner != Thread.current
unless @mon_mutex.try_lock
return false
end
@mon_owner = Thread.current
@mon_count = 0
end
@mon_count += 1
return true
end
Creates a new MonitorMixin::ConditionVariable associated with the receiver.
# File monitor.rb, line 240
def new_cond
return ConditionVariable.new(self)
end