On Sat, 15 Jan 2005, Alex Baretta wrote:

> Luca Pascali wrote:
> > Just a little question, my curiosity about the thread module.
> > 
> > I found in Posix (this is from 'info libc' page on section Mutexes) 
> > these three functions
> > 
> > Function: int pthread_mutex_lock (pthread_mutex_t *mutex))
> > Function: int pthread_mutex_trylock (pthread_mutex_t *MUTEX)
> > Function: int pthread_mutex_timedlock (pthread_mutex_t *MUTEX, const 
> > struct timespec *ABSTIME)
> 
> You can probably simulate the third one fairly well by resorting to 
> Unix.select as a timer, but why in the world would you want to lock for 
> a while and then forget about it?

No, you misunderstand what the function does.  The function won't wait 
more than ABSTIME to acquire the lock.  _mutex_lock() waits forever to get 
the lock, _mutex_trylock doesn't wait at all, and _mutex_timedlock only 
waits so long to get the lock.

Brian