How smart are Semaphore Objects?

[Matthew D. Wood]

Ype Kingma <ykingma at accessforall.nl> wrote in message 

> A Semaphore can be released from an other thread.

That sucks.


 
> You might prefer to use RLock. Releasing it is documented ao. by:

The reason I wanted to use a semaphore, instead of a (lock or Rlock)
was the counting ability.  I'm trying to limit my number of threads to
say 50.  You can't do that with an Rlock, right?

Hmmmm.  Maybe a condition with an Rlock...  I will have to look.



> It can be better for performance to release a Semaphore from another thread.
> I would consider this as a candidate for style improvement, though.

I don't understand.  Why would it be better for a non-owning thread to
release a Semaphore?



> > This may seem a bit paranoid, but in big groups, paranoid is so
> > important.  My code may be a bit large, but it's never the part that
> > crashes because of a divide by 0 or a file didn't open because it
> > never existed.
> 
> Nod.

Thanks.


 
> > Maybe there is an exception the Semaphore raises?  I don't know.
> > 
> 
> When you are paranoid enough test RLock. You'll like it.

Like I said, RLock seems like a 1 or 0 thing.  I need a less than
MAX_THREADS thing.



> > Thanks for helping.  I really appreciate the time and effort.
> 
> My pleasure,

Again, thank you.