Producer/Consumer Problem

Hello all,

I want to write a program that uses multiple threads that does the following:

Opens a simple text file containing AT LEAST 500 KB of data

a reads a line of the file into a “buffer” (a “circular” array with fixed size = 10 data lines)
b when “end of file” is detected, puts a “special code” in the buffer
c continues reading until the buffer is full or waits for an indication that there is space in the buffer, then continues reading.

I'm very confused on how to create a "buffer." Any help?


Also, I want to implement this to:

a get a line from the buffer and writes a line of the file to a file
b exits when a special code is in the buffer.
c repeats the previous steps (a, b) as long as there is data in the buffer, waits if the buffer is empty



Any help will be greatly appreciated. I'm new at C++ programming, and am very interested in seeing this program work!! Thank you all for your help.

Also, how do I create threads using C++ on a Windows machine? Thanks for the help.

Which C++ compiler do you have on your windows machine?
And which OS?

Are you reading and writing in the same thread? Because it makes a big difference on the problem.

Well, the way I would compile my program would be remotely through a Linux machine running Gcc. I hope this information will aid you in helping me write this program.

Reading and writing will occur on different threads.


Please let me know if you need more information. Thank you so much for helping.

You should just google or read in your textbook on how to write a circular buffer. Then you will need to thing about how to implement a mutex for the buffer.

It's not a hard problem, but a book or tutorial will explain better than a brief account by a forum member.