[C++] lock_guard vs unique_lock

• Lock doesn’t have to taken right at the construction, you can pass the flag std::defer_lock during its construction to keep the mutex unlocked during construction.

std::unique_lock<std::mutex>(mutex, std::defer_lock);

• We can unlock it before the function ends and don’t have to necessarily wait for destructor to release it, which can be handy.

• You can pass the ownership of the lock from a function, it is movable and not copyable.

• It can be used with conditional variables since that requires mutex to be locked, condition checked and unlocked while waiting for a condition.

            std::unique_lock<std::mutex> lock { _mutex };
            _condition.wait(lock);