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Why Semaphore not working ?

Hi,
I have written a simple Dialog Based application in VC++. I have added one class to it named CMyResource.
There are 8 Instances of my resource and I want to allow only 4 at a time and concurrently . I believe this suggests
use of semaphores. So In my main dialog class
I have created instance of CSemaphore and Used
CSingleLock to point to it. Initial count for semaphore
Have kept to 4 ie
CSemaphore mySemaphore(1,4); and
CSingleLock myLock(&mySemaphore);

I have used Afxbegin thread to create threads for all 8
instances But somehow it is not working. All 8 instances
are getting simultaneous access.

I checked the condition by

if(myLock.lock())
{

//Access resource

}
else
{

//Report Access Denied

}

Can anybody tell me why is it not working ?

Any help appreciated..

Thanks
p10m

AlexFM

myLock.lock();

This line gets access to semaphore immidiately, if it is free. If not, it waits untill semaphore is released. else branch is never called. All your threads get access to resource, but not simultenously.
To see that it really works, add MessageBox call to each thread. MessageBox stops thread and waits for OK click. All this time resource is locked. If semaphore works as expected, you will not see more than 4 message boxes simultemously.

By the way, I think you should create the semafore with initial count 0:

CSemaphore mySemaphore(0,4);

AlexFM

Additional explanation:

myLock.lock() - returns only TRUE, because it's parameter DWORD dwTimeOut has default value INFINITE, that means - wait until the object is signaled before returning.

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AlexFM

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DanRollins

Don't forget that the mutex object needs to be either a global variable or a static member of the class ... otherwise, each instance of the class will have it's own copy!

-- Dan