将pthread_mutex_t传递给函数

Question

Is it ok to pass pthread lock to a function? the reason I'm asking for this is because I have a number of threads, let's say 10, acting as consumers, and 2 producers, each consumer thread has it's own linked list(buffer), the producers will send data to one of these threads based on a specific rules, so sometimes producer 1 sends to consumer 1 and then to consumer 2 and then back to consumer 1 so on.

So I'm thinking of this,

when producer 1 want to send to consumer 5,

1. Producer 1 call function linked-list to share the data (IPC) and pass lock[5] to this function, in this case it will be lock 5
2. Function linked-list will lock lock[5] and update the linked-list
3. When consumer 5 call function linked-list it will pass its lock (consumer5 will always use lock[5]) and if producer already locked this lock then it will wait.

please note that the name of lock is shared in the main()

pthread_mutex_t lock[10];

I'm using gcc on linux, and please let me know if the question isn't clear as I have a terrible way of describing things.

Answer 1

You can. just make sure to pass the address of the mutex. You can't copy it.

Answer 2

You can do a good think. you create an other c file and you insert:

pthread_mutex_t lock[10];
type_t *produce(int tid) {

if (tid == {producer_1}) {
    //call function linked-list to share the data (IPC) and pass lock[5] to this function, in this case it will be lock 5
}
...
}

void consume(type_t* data, int tid) {
....
}

in this manner you centralize your processing to make your program more readable and simple. in your threads you just apply produce and consume with producer/consumer ids