I recently tried to implement an atomic reference counter in C, so I referred to the implementation of std::shared_ptr in STL, and I am very confused about the implementation of weak_ptr::lock. When executing compared_and_exchange, clang specified memory_order_seq_cst, g++ specified memory_order_acq_rel, and MSVC specified memory_order_relaxed. I think memory_order_relaxed has been enough, since there is no data needed to synchronize if user_count is non-zero. I am not an expert in this area, can anyone provide some advice?
Following are code snippets:
bool _Incref_nz() noexcept { // increment use count if not zero, return true if successful
auto& _Volatile_uses = reinterpret_cast<volatile long&>(_Uses);
#ifdef _M_CEE_PURE
long _Count = *_Atomic_address_as<const long>(&_Volatile_uses);
#else
long _Count = __iso_volatile_load32(reinterpret_cast<volatile int*>(&_Volatile_uses));
#endif
while (_Count != 0) {
const long _Old_value = _INTRIN_RELAXED(_InterlockedCompareExchange)(&_Volatile_uses, _Count + 1, _Count);
if (_Old_value == _Count) {
return true;
}
_Count = _Old_value;
}
return false;
}
__shared_weak_count*
__shared_weak_count::lock() noexcept
{
long object_owners = __libcpp_atomic_load(&__shared_owners_);
while (object_owners != -1)
{
if (__libcpp_atomic_compare_exchange(&__shared_owners_,
&object_owners,
object_owners+1))
return this;
}
return nullptr;
}
template<>
inline bool
_Sp_counted_base<_S_atomic>::
_M_add_ref_lock_nothrow() noexcept
{
// Perform lock-free add-if-not-zero operation.
_Atomic_word __count = _M_get_use_count();
do
{
if (__count == 0)
return false;
// Replace the current counter value with the old value + 1, as
// long as it's not changed meanwhile.
}
while (!__atomic_compare_exchange_n(&_M_use_count, &__count, __count + 1,
true, __ATOMIC_ACQ_REL,
__ATOMIC_RELAXED));
return true;
}