vtkCriticalSection
Section: Visualization Toolkit Common Classes
Usage
vtkCriticalSection allows the locking of variables which are accessed
through different threads. This header file also defines
vtkSimpleCriticalSection which is not a subclass of vtkObject.
The API is identical to that of vtkMutexLock, and the behavior is
identical as well, except on Windows 9x/NT platforms. The only difference
on these platforms is that vtkMutexLock is more flexible, in that
it works across processes as well as across threads, but also costs
more, in that it evokes a 600-cycle x86 ring transition. The
vtkCriticalSection provides a higher-performance equivalent (on
Windows) but won't work across processes. Since it is unclear how,
in vtk, an object at the vtk level can be shared across processes
in the first place, one should use vtkCriticalSection unless one has
a very good reason to use vtkMutexLock. If higher-performance equivalents
for non-Windows platforms (Irix, SunOS, etc) are discovered, they
should replace the implementations in this class
To create an instance of class vtkCriticalSection, simply
invoke its constructor as follows
obj = vtkCriticalSection
Methods
The class vtkCriticalSection has several methods that can be used.
They are listed below.
Note that the documentation is translated automatically from the VTK sources,
and may not be completely intelligible. When in doubt, consult the VTK website.
In the methods listed below, obj
is an instance of the vtkCriticalSection class.
-
string = obj.GetClassName ()
-
int = obj.IsA (string name)
-
vtkCriticalSection = obj.NewInstance ()
-
vtkCriticalSection = obj.SafeDownCast (vtkObject o)
-
obj.Lock ()
- Lock the vtkCriticalSection
-
obj.Unlock ()
- Unlock the vtkCriticalSection