I have this requirement wherein I have to increment the value of a POSIX semaphore by more than 1.
Apparently, there is no way in POSIX specification to do this. There is no sem_setvalue() similar to sem_getvalue(). I do not want to go back to System V semaphores just because of this constraint.
Is there any alternative way to accomplish this? Or will I have to go the System V way?
I am programming in C on GNU/Linux.
Great thanks in advance.
I have this requirement wherein I have to increment the value of a POSIX semaphore by more than 1.
Is there any alternative way to accomplish this? Or will I have to go the System V way?
So what is your question really? How to implement something not supported by interface? Or how to create a structure behaving like semaphore using POSIX?
If this is later, before resorting to heavy guns like SysV, you can always use the pthread_mutex_t
/pthread_cond_t
pair to implement pretty much any multi-threading synchronization primitive, semaphore included.
E.g., untested:
typedef cool_sem {
pthread_mutex_t guard;
pthread_cond_t cond;
int count;
} cool_sem_t;
void init( cool_sem_t *s )
{
pthread_mutex_init( &s->guard, 0 );
pthread_cond_init( &s->cond, 0 );
s->S = 0;
}
void incr( cool_sem_t *s, unsigned delta )
{
assert( s );
pthread_mutex_lock( &s->guard );
s->S += delta;
pthread_cond_broadcast( &s->cond );
pthread_mutex_unlock( &s->guard );
}
void decr( cool_sem_t *s, unsigned delta )
{
assert( s );
pthread_mutex_lock( &s->guard );
do {
if (s->S >= delta) {
s->S -= delta;
break;
}
pthread_cond_wait( &s->cond, &s->guard );
} while (1);
pthread_mutex_unlock( &s->guard );
}
semctl
and semop
are what you need.Use GETVAL SETVAL in smectl for getter and setter.Set sem_op in sembuf struct to what you want to do with the semaphore when using semop. See man for more.
No there is no such alternative when working with sem_t
. If you have not yet done so, read the sem_overview
man page on linux. The calls that are listed there are all you can get: initialization to a specific value, increment and decrement by one.
If that is the complete specification, I think your teacher wants you to come up with a mechanism that will allow you to increment a semaphore by more than one atomically. So my guess is that one of your tasks is to synchronize the incrementation.