Lock-Based Data Structures

When threads share a data structure, and the data structure is mutable, you have to protect the data structure from concurrent access. Conceptually, protection can be done from outside or from inside. From outside means that it is in the responsibility of the caller (application) to protect the data. This outside perspective is the perspective, I mainly used in this book until now. Form inside means that the data structure is responsible for protecting itself. A data structure that protects itself so that no data race can appear is called thread-safe. This inside perspective is the perspective, I write about in this and in the next chapter.

I want to emphasise explicitly, I could never have written a book about concurrency without the help of previous authors. This statement holds, in particular, true for the chapters about concurrent data structures. My book is, therefore, heavily influenced by the book The Art of Multiprocessing Programmming by Maurice...