Thread: Forcing a context switch

I'm aware of sched_yield() & SwitchToThread but they only seem to do thread level, I'd like to do process level prior to a loop that is supposed to lock a value (without functions like pthread_mutex_lock) to ensure the race condition I'm expecting in the loop is the one I actually get, is there any functions that would enable telling the system to switch process context if it needs to? The loop in question is expected to have a short life but a process level context switch during the loop somehow interferes with it's purpose so I though I'd try my tests with a forced switch prior to the loop.

Originally Posted by aghast

Any system call will give the OS the opportunity to force a switch. In particular, a blocking call will practically guarantee it. You might consider something like sleep(0); or a write to /dev/null.

Note that there are layers in the standard library that separate you from system calls, so you may have to do some digging. Calling sleep(0) might be intercepted since it's a no-op. (Check the linux sources). Calling printf and friends will almost certainly be buffered, so you'll have to call write or _write or something.

Thanks, I was just about to respond to this thread when I saw your post, I think I finally managed to design a suitable fallback for a lack of system provided mutex, it's slightly slower than the pthread_mutex_t but it seems to work without issue (unless you count annoying dialogues in debuggers). I've attached a copy of my test file for the curious