Synchronized call of functions using std::condition_variable

Question

I got addicted to learning concurrency again and tried to solve this problem .

In short, I have a class and 3 functions. I need to sync their calls (need to print FirstSecondThird ).

It will become more clear with the code below:

std::function<void()> printFirst = []() { std::cout << "First"; };
std::function<void()> printSecond = []() { std::cout << "Second"; };
std::function<void()> printThird = []() { std::cout << "Third"; };

class Foo {
    std::condition_variable cv;
    bool mfirst,msecond;
    std::mutex mtx;
public:
    Foo() {
        mfirst = false;
        msecond = false;
    }

    void first(std::function<void()> printFirst) {
        std::unique_lock<std::mutex> l(mtx);
        printFirst();
        mfirst = true;
    }

    void second(std::function<void()> printSecond) {
        std::unique_lock<std::mutex> l(mtx);
        cv.wait(l, [this]{return mfirst == true; });
        printSecond();
        msecond = true;
    }

    void third(std::function<void()> printThird) {
        std::unique_lock<std::mutex> l(mtx);
        cv.wait(l, [this] {return (mfirst && msecond) == true; });
        printThird();
    }
};

int main()
{
    Foo t;

    std::thread t3((&Foo::third, t, printThird));
    std::thread t2((&Foo::second, t, printSecond));
    std::thread t1((&Foo::first, t, printFirst));

    t3.join();
    t2.join();
    t1.join();

    return 0;
}

And guess what my output is? It prints ThirdSecondFirst .

How is this possible? Isn't this code prone to DEADLOCK? I mean, when the first thread acquired the mutex in function second , wouldn't it wait forever because now as mutex is acquired we cannot change variable mfirst ?

Answer 1

You have a very subtle bug.

std::thread t3((&Foo::third, t, printThird));

This line does not do what you expect. It initializes a thread with only one argument, printThird , instead of initializing with the 3 arguments you specified. That's because you accidentally used a comma expression . As a result, &Foo::third and t are just discarded, and the member functions are never even called.

The only functions that are called in your code are printFirst , printSecond , and printThird . Without any synchronization, they may print in arbitrary order. You may even get interleaved output.

std::thread t3{&Foo::third, t, printThird};

Here is the corrected version. The curly braces are for avoiding the compiler treating this as a function declaration because of most vexing parse

As a side note, as mentioned in the comments, you are using condition variables wrong.