Re: task-safe hash table?

[Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>]

"John" <jpwoodruff@irisinternet.net> writes:

> tmoran@acm.org wrote:
>> Is there some code around for a hash table that allows multiple tasks
>> to do simultaneous lookup?
>
> I think you might be able to get part way by consulting the original
> Booch components.

The 95 BCs were going to have Synchronized and Guarded extensions, but
(a) the design meant that this was going to be a _lot_ of work, (b)
the form that just did a global lock on the container was easy enough
to do, but the other, which was meant to implement finer granularity,
turned out to be far too application-specific; so I ended up not doing
either. The killer was iteration.

It seems better to use the BCs (or Ada.Containers come to that) as an
implementation mechanism for whatever storage your application needs
behind appropriate concurrency mechanisms.