线程安全 thread safe

什么是线程安全：

The first class of approaches focuses on avoiding shared state, and includes:

Re-entrancy 

Writing code in such a way that it can be partially executed by a thread, reexecuted by the same thread or simultaneously executed by another thread and still correctly complete the original execution. This requires the saving of  state information in variables local to each execution, usually on a stack, instead of in  static or  global variables or other non-local state. All non-local state must be accessed through atomic operations and the data-structures must also be reentrant.

Thread-local storage 

Variables are localized so that each thread has its own private copy. These variables retain their values across  subroutine and other code boundaries, and are thread-safe since they are local to each thread, even though the code which accesses them might be executed simultaneously by another thread.

Immutable objects 

The state of an object cannot be changed after construction. This implies both that only read-only data is shared and that inherent thread safety is attained. Mutable (non-const) operations can then be implemented in such a way that they create new objects instead of modifying existing ones. This approach is used by the  string implementations in Java, C# and Python. ^[7]

The second class of approaches are synchronization-related, and are used in situations where shared state cannot be avoided:

Mutual exclusion

Access to shared data is  serialized using mechanisms that ensure only one thread reads or writes to the shared data at any time. Incorporation of mutual exclusion needs to be well thought out, since improper usage can lead to side-effects like  deadlocks,  livelocks and  resource starvation.

Atomic operations 

Shared data are accessed by using atomic operations which cannot be interrupted by other threads. This usually requires using special machine language instructions, which might be available in a runtime library. Since the operations are atomic, the shared data are always kept in a valid state, no matter how other threads access it. Atomic operations form the basis of many thread locking mechanisms, and are used to implement mutual exclusion primitives.

实际例子：

In the following piece of Java code, the function is thread-safe:

class Counter {
    private int i = 0;

    public synchronized void inc() {
        i++;
    }
}

In the C programming language, each thread has its own stack. However, a static variable is not kept on the stack; all threads share simultaneous access to it. If multiple threads overlap while running the same function, it is possible that a static variable might be changed by one thread while another is midway through checking it. This difficult-to-diagnose logic error, which may compile and run properly most of the time, is called a race condition. One common way to avoid this is to use another shared variable as a "lock" or "mutex" (from mutual exclusion).

In the following piece of C code, the function is thread-safe, but not reentrant:

# include <pthread.h>

int increment_counter ()
{
 static int counter = 0;
 static pthread_mutex_t mutex = PTHREAD_MUTEX_INITIALIZER;

 // only allow one thread to increment at a time
 pthread_mutex_lock(&mutex);

 ++counter;

 // store value before any other threads increment it further
 int result = counter;

 pthread_mutex_unlock(&mutex);

 return result;
}

In the above, increment_counter can be called by different threads without any problem since a mutex is used to synchronize all access to the shared counter variable. But if the function is used in a reentrant interrupt handler and a second interrupt arises inside the function, the second routine will hang forever. As interrupt servicing can disable other interrupts, the whole system could suffer.

The same function can be implemented to be both thread-safe and reentrant using the lock-free atomics in C++11:

# include <atomic>

int increment_counter ()
{
 static std::atomic<int> counter(0);

 // increment is guaranteed to be done atomically
 int result = ++counter;

 return result;
}