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2747

answers:

7

I'd like to document what high-level (i.e. C++ not inline assembler ) functions or macros are available for Compare And Swap (CAS) atomic primitives...

E.g., WIN32 on x86 has a family of functions _InterlockedCompareExchange in the <_intrin.h> header.

+12  A: 

I'll let others list the various platform-specific APIs, but for future reference in C++09 you'll get the

atomic_compare_exchange()

operation in the new "Atomic operations library".

Michael Burr
Sweet answer!! Can't wait for that...
ceretullis
+2  A: 

On Solaris there is "atomic.h" (i.e. <sys/atomic.h>).

Christian.K
+2  A: 

MacOS X has OSAtomic.h

Don Neufeld
+2  A: 

GCC has some built-ins for atomic accesses, too.

Chris Jester-Young
+1  A: 

java has this CAS operation, too

see here

there are practical uses for this, like a lock-free hashtable used in multiprocessor system

Andreas Petersson
The question is tagged C++ ;)
ceretullis
+1 but thanks anyway. Now I know that Java has CAS too :)
Viet
+3  A: 

glib, a common system library on Linux and Unix systems (but also supported on Windows and Mac OS X), defines several atomic operations, including g_atomic_int_compare_and_exchange and g_atomic_pointer_compare_and_exchange.

Ben Combee
+2  A: 

There have been a series of working group papers on this subject proposing changes to the C++ Standard Library. WG N2427 (C++ Atomic Types and Operations) is the most recent, which contributes to section 29 -- Atomic operations library -- of the pending standard.

seh