Use lock hierarchies to avoid deadlock

Dr. Dobb's Journal

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 67-69

  Sutter, Herb ^a,b  

^a MICROSOFT   (United States)

^b ISO C++ Standards Committee ^*

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EID: 38049183001     PISSN: 1044789X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Trade Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (1)

1. Or otherwise gets the same effect. For example, it is possible to just start trying to acquire the locks in some randomly selected order using try lock operations, and if we can't acquire them all just back-off (unlock the ones already acquired) and try a different order until we find one that works. Surprisingly, this can be more efficient than taking the locks in a hard-coded global order, although any back-off-and-retry strategy has to take care that it doesn't end up prone to livelock problems instead. But we can leave all this to the implementer; the key is that the programmer simply writes lock( /* whatever */ ) and is insulated from the details of determining the best way to keep the order consistent