Using std::mutex as member variable in a class

Question

I have defined a class that has std::mutex my_mutex as its private member variable. But when I try to use it using lock_guard in a member function which is called from different threads, the compiler throws up a lots of errors. If I keep this mutex outside the class it works. The code is as follows

class ThreadClass
{
  std::mutex my_mutex;
  public: 
     void addToList(int max, int interval)
    {

      std::lock_guard<std::mutex> guard(my_mutex);
      for (int i = 0; i < max; i++) 
       {
            // Some operation
       }
    }
};


 int main()
 {
    std::thread ct(&ThreadClass::addToList,ThreadClass(),100,1);
    std::thread ct2(&ThreadClass::addToList,ThreadClass(),100,10);
    std::thread ct3(&ThreadClass::print,ThreadClass());

     ct.join();
     ct2.join();
     ct3.join();
  }

If the same my_mutex is kept out of the class then it works fine. So when the same variable is within the class and called within the member function acted on by a thread, does it treat like a static member?

Answer 1

The std::thread constructor copies the arguments that are passed to the executed function. But std::mutex is non-copyable and so ThreadClass is non-copyable if it has such a member.

You are passing a temporary ThreadClass object to std::thread, but you probably want to use the same object in all your threads. You can use std::ref to pass a reference of an existing object. The following code compiles on GCC 7.1.0:

#include <thread>
#include <mutex>

class ThreadClass
{
    std::mutex my_mutex;
public: 
    void addToList(int max, int interval)
    {
        std::lock_guard<std::mutex> guard(my_mutex);
        // ...
    }
    void print()
    {
        // ...
    }
};

int main()
{
    ThreadClass obj;
    std::thread ct(&ThreadClass::addToList, std::ref(obj), 100, 1);
    std::thread ct2(&ThreadClass::addToList, std::ref(obj), 100, 10);
    std::thread ct3(&ThreadClass::print, std::ref(obj));

    ct.join();
    ct2.join();
    ct3.join();
}

Passing a pointer to the object instead of a reference should also work:

std::thread ct(&ThreadClass::addToList, &obj, 100, 1);