flockfile(3S)flockfile(3S)NAMEflockfile(), ftrylockfile(), funlockfile() - explicit locking of
streams within a multithread application
SYNOPSISDESCRIPTION
The and functions provide for explicit application-level locking of
streams. These functions can be used by a thread to delineate a
sequence of I/O statements that are to be executed as a unit.
The function is used by a thread to acquire ownership of a object.
The function is used by a thread to acquire ownership of a object if
the object is available; is a non-blocking version of
The function is used to relinquish the ownership granted to the thread.
The behavior is undefined if a thread other than the current owner
calls the function.
Logically, there is a count associated with each stream. This count is
implicitly initialized to zero when the stream is created. The stream
is unlocked when the count is zero. When the count is positive, a sin‐
gle thread owns the stream. When the function is called, if the count
is zero or if the count is positive and the caller owns the stream, the
count is incremented. Otherwise, the calling thread is suspended,
waiting for the count to return to zero. Each call to decrements the
count. This allows matching calls to (or successful calls to and to be
nested.
All POSIX.1 and C standard functions that reference objects behave as
if they use and internally to obtain ownership of these objects.
RETURN VALUE
None for and The function returns zero for success and nonzero to indi‐
cate that the lock cannot be acquired.
flockfile(3S)