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Module Sem

module Sem: sig .. end

Ocaml interface to POSIX semaphores. Mimics the standard C library as met in FreeBsd 5 (see man sem_open, man sem, etc.). For the further reference see "ISO/IEC 9945-1:1996 (``POSIX.1'')." (find it youself ;)

Author: Paul Argentoff, argentoff@gmail.com.

type t

An abstract semaphore type.

Named semaphore operation 

val sem_open : string ->
       ?oflags:Unix.open_flag list ->
       ?mode:Unix.file_perm -> ?ival:int -> unit -> t

sem_open name oflags mode ival creates or opens the named semaphore specified by name. The returned semaphore may be used in subsequent calls to sem_getvalue, sem_wait, sem_trywait, sem_post, and sem_close. oflags must be either Unix.O_CREAT, Unix.O_EXCL or both.

Default values:

val sem_close : t -> unit

Closes the semaphore.

val sem_unlink : string -> unit

Erases the named semaphore.

Generic semaphore operation

val sem_post : t -> unit

sem_post sem increments (unlocks) the semaphore pointed to by sem. If there are threads blocked on the semaphore when sem_post is called, then the highest priority thread that has been blocked the long- est on the semaphore will be allowed to return from sem_wait.

val sem_wait : t -> unit

sem_wait sem decrements (locks) the semaphore pointed to by sem, but blocks if the value of sem is zero, until the value is non-zero and the value can be decremented.

val sem_trywait : t -> unit

sem_trywait sem decrements (locks) the semaphore pointed to by sem only if the value is non-zero. Otherwise, the semaphore is not decremented and an error is returned.

val sem_getvalue : t -> int

sem_getvalue sem returns a value of sem.

Unnamed semaphore operation

Note: the following two functions do semaphore creation/destruction only; all other operations (except sem_open) are common to named semaphores and should be done by the functions documented above.

val sem_init : ?semop:t option -> ?pshared:int -> ?ival:int -> unit -> t

sem_init semop pshared ival initializes the unnamed semaphore. If semop = None, returns the newly created semaphore, else re-initializes the existing one and returns it. The semaphore will have the value ival. A non-zero value for pshared specifies a shared semaphore that can be used by multiple processes, which this implementation is not capable of.

Following a successful call to sem_init, sem can be used as an argument in subsequent calls to sem_wait, sem_trywait, sem_post, and sem_destroy. The sem argument is no longer valid after a successful call to sem_destroy).

Default values:

val sem_destroy : t -> unit

destroy sem destroys the unnamed semaphore pointed to by sem. After a successful call to sem_destroy, sem is unusable until re- initialized by another call to sem_init.