In the linux man page for pthread_mutex_destroy, it has the following code snippet below. One thing I don't understand about this procedure to destroy a mutex, is that how do we know that between pthread_mutex_unlock and pthread_mutex_destroy no other thread tries to acquire a lock on said mutex?
Typically, how should this be handled? 1) Should an additional mutex be used to ensure that this cannot happen? 2) Or is it the clients responsibility to not try to increase the reference count after it hits 0?
obj_done(struct obj *op)
{
pthread_mutex_lock(&op->om);
if (--op->refcnt == 0) {
pthread_mutex_unlock(&op->om);
(A) pthread_mutex_destroy(&op->om);
(B) free(op);
} else
(C) pthread_mutex_unlock(&op->om);
}
Something should be done to ensure the mutex isn’t going to get another lock attempt while you’re destroying it, yes. In the example case, with a reference count going to 0 involved, it's reasonable to expect that the thread holding the mutex is also the last thread with a pointer to the object. All the other threads that were using the object are finished with it, have decremented the reference count, and have forgotten about the object. So no thread will be attempting to lock the mutex when pthread_mutex_destroy is executed.
That's the typical design pattern. You don't destroy a mutex until all threads are done with it. The natural lifetime of a mutex means you don’t have to synchronize destroying them.