atomic operation of reference assignment?

Hello everyone,


I have not found any support document about whether the operation of reference variable assignment is atomic or not.

For example, foo1 and foo2 are both reference variable of type Foo. Is foo1 = foo2 atomic? Any support documents?


thanks in advance,
George

Quote:

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Originally Posted by George2

Hello everyone,


I have not found any support document about whether the operation of reference variable assignment is atomic or not.

For example, foo1 and foo2 are both reference variable of type Foo. Is foo1 = foo2 atomic? Any support documents?


thanks in advance,
George

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That would very much depend on:
1. The type Foo - it must be a simple type (e.g int, char, etc). Complex types (e.g. class, struct etc) are almost guaranteed to NOT be atomic. The compiler MAY find it possible to do it, but it's by no means guaranteed, and it's certainly NOT going to happen for large structures (more than say 8 or 16 bytes for sure).
2. The compiler - the compiler is allowed to do as it likes with accesses. You can sort of expect the compiler to do a good job of it on simple types, but there's absolutely no guarantee.

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Mats