Basis question

[renorm]

Does concurrent wringing the same value to the primitive variable needs to be synchronized?

[cpp]bool updated_flag = false; // indicates that the data was updated

/* Any thread which modifies the data must set
   updated_flag = true
*/

/* Later, after reaching the serial section, check the value of updated_flag.
   updated_flag == true indicates, that the data was modified.
*/[/cpp]

Either all threads write the same value into updated_flag or all threads leave updated_flag unchanged. I could replace updated_flag with an atomic variable, but don't want to do it unless there is a need.

[RafSchietekat]

If I understand the scenario correctly you can probably get away with it, for a boolean anyway, but why not just do the right thing?

[Dmitry_Vyukov]

Quoting renorm

Does concurrent wringing the same value to the primitive variable needs to be synchronized?

From POSIX point of view - yes.
From Win32 point of view - most likely yes.
From C99/C++03 point of view - it's not specified, so usually one of the above.
From C1x/C++0x point of view - yes.

[renorm]

The right thing is to use atomic. But an atomic variable has no constructor. It is inconvenient, sometimes. For example, this doesn't work.

[cpp]struct A {
    static tbb::atomic flag_;
};

tbb::atomic A::flag_ = true;[/cpp]

[Dmitry_Vyukov]

Global objects are zero initialized. So just call your flag not_flag_.

[ARCH_R_Intel]

By the way, the reason that atomic has no constructors is that in examples like renorm's, there's no way to ensure that dynamic initialization of flag_ occurs before the first access. By not having any constructors, we enable the use of the zero initialization trick.

Of course with C++0x, we could use the constexpr feature to fix the problem. Though then code is likely to use C++0x atomics anyway.

If timing of dynamic initialization is not an issue, a work-around is to subclass atomic with a class that has the desired constructor. Though in practice I use Dmitriy's suggestion of naming things so that zero initialization works.

- Arch

[renorm]

I will use Dmitriy's suggestion as well. Thanks.

[Dmitry_Vyukov]

Quoting Arch Robison (Intel)

By the way, the reason that atomic has no constructors is that in examples like renorm's, there's no way to ensure that dynamic initialization of flag_ occurs before the first access. By not having any constructors, we enable the use of the zero initialization trick.

Of course with C++0x, we could use the constexpr feature to fix the problem. Though then code is likely to use C++0x atomics anyway.

If timing of dynamic initialization is not an issue, a work-around is to subclass atomic with a class that has the desired constructor. Though in practice I use Dmitriy's suggestion of naming things so that zero initialization works.

There is another possibility (which is sometimes applied to things like atomics and mutexes). Create basic_atomic class which is a POD type. Not that handy to use, but can be initialized to any value.