Difference between revisions of "cpp/atomic/atomic compare exchange"

Latest revision as of 05:26, 24 April 2024

Atomically compares the object representation(until C++20)value representation(since C++20) of the object pointed to by obj with that of the object pointed to by expected, and if those are bitwise-equal, replaces the former with desired (performs read-modify-write operation). Otherwise, loads the actual value pointed to by obj into *expected (performs load operation).

These functions are defined in terms of member functions of std::atomic:

If failure is stronger than success or(until C++17) is one of std::memory_order_release and std::memory_order_acq_rel, the behavior is undefined.

[edit] Parameters

[edit] Return value

The result of the comparison: true if *obj was equal to *expected, false otherwise.

[edit] Notes

std::atomic_compare_exchange_weak and std::atomic_compare_exchange_weak_explicit (the weak versions) are allowed to fail spuriously, that is, act as if *obj != *expected even if they are equal. When a compare-and-exchange is in a loop, they will yield better performance on some platforms.

When a weak compare-and-exchange would require a loop and a strong one would not, the strong one is preferable unless the object representation of T may include padding bits,(until C++20) trap bits, or offers multiple object representations for the same value (e.g. floating-point NaN). In those cases, weak compare-and-exchange typically works because it quickly converges on some stable object representation.

For a union with bits that participate in the value representations of some members but not the others, compare-and-exchange might always fail because such padding bits have indeterminate values when they do not participate in the value representation of the active member.

[edit] Example

#include <atomic>
 
template<class T>
struct node
{
    T data;
    node* next;
    node(const T& data) : data(data), next(nullptr) {}
};
 
template<class T>
class stack
{
    std::atomic<node<T>*> head;
public:
    void push(const T& data)
    {
        node<T>* new_node = new node<T>(data);
 
        // put the current value of head into new_node->next
        new_node->next = head.load(std::memory_order_relaxed);
 
        // now make new_node the new head, but if the head
        // is no longer what's stored in new_node->next
        // (some other thread must have inserted a node just now)
        // then put that new head into new_node->next and try again
        while (!std::atomic_compare_exchange_weak_explicit(
                   &head, &new_node->next, new_node,
                   std::memory_order_release, std::memory_order_relaxed))
            ; // the body of the loop is empty
// note: the above loop is not thread-safe in at least
// GCC prior to 4.8.3 (bug 60272), clang prior to 2014-05-05 (bug 18899)
// MSVC prior to 2014-03-17 (bug 819819). See member function version for workaround
    }
};
 
int main()
{
    stack<int> s;
    s.push(1);
    s.push(2);
    s.push(3);
}

[edit] Defect reports

The following behavior-changing defect reports were applied retroactively to previously published C++ standards.

[edit] See also