Provided by: manpages-posix-dev_2017a-2_all bug

PROLOG

       This  manual  page  is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux implementation of this interface
       may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the  interface
       may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME

       pthread_cond_timedwait, pthread_cond_wait — wait on a condition

SYNOPSIS

       #include <pthread.h>

       int pthread_cond_timedwait(pthread_cond_t *restrict cond,
           pthread_mutex_t *restrict mutex,
           const struct timespec *restrict abstime);
       int pthread_cond_wait(pthread_cond_t *restrict cond,
           pthread_mutex_t *restrict mutex);

DESCRIPTION

       The  pthread_cond_timedwait()  and pthread_cond_wait() functions shall block on a condition variable. The
       application shall ensure that these functions are  called  with  mutex  locked  by  the  calling  thread;
       otherwise,  an  error  (for PTHREAD_MUTEX_ERRORCHECK and robust mutexes) or undefined behavior (for other
       mutexes) results.

       These functions atomically release mutex and cause the calling thread to block on the condition  variable
       cond;  atomically  here means ``atomically with respect to access by another thread to the mutex and then
       the condition variable''. That is, if another thread is able to acquire the  mutex  after  the  about-to-
       block thread has released it, then a subsequent call to pthread_cond_broadcast() or pthread_cond_signal()
       in that thread shall behave as if it were issued after the about-to-block thread has blocked.

       Upon successful return, the mutex shall have been locked and shall be owned by  the  calling  thread.  If
       mutex  is  a  robust mutex where an owner terminated while holding the lock and the state is recoverable,
       the mutex shall be acquired even though the function returns an error code.

       When using condition variables there is always a Boolean predicate involving shared variables  associated
       with  each  condition  wait  that  is  true  if  the  thread  should  proceed.  Spurious wakeups from the
       pthread_cond_timedwait()  or  pthread_cond_wait()  functions   may   occur.   Since   the   return   from
       pthread_cond_timedwait()  or  pthread_cond_wait()  does  not  imply  anything  about  the  value  of this
       predicate, the predicate should be re-evaluated upon such return.

       When a thread waits on  a  condition  variable,  having  specified  a  particular  mutex  to  either  the
       pthread_cond_timedwait()  or  the pthread_cond_wait() operation, a dynamic binding is formed between that
       mutex and condition variable that remains in effect as long as at least one  thread  is  blocked  on  the
       condition  variable.  During  this time, the effect of an attempt by any thread to wait on that condition
       variable using a different mutex is undefined. Once all waiting threads have been unblocked  (as  by  the
       pthread_cond_broadcast()  operation), the next wait operation on that condition variable shall form a new
       dynamic binding with the mutex specified by that wait operation. Even though the dynamic binding  between
       condition  variable  and  mutex  may be removed or replaced between the time a thread is unblocked from a
       wait on the condition variable and the time that it returns to the caller or begins cancellation cleanup,
       the  unblocked  thread  shall  always re-acquire the mutex specified in the condition wait operation call
       from which it is returning.

       A condition wait (whether timed or not) is a cancellation point. When the cancelability type of a  thread
       is  set  to  PTHREAD_CANCEL_DEFERRED,  a  side-effect  of  acting  upon a cancellation request while in a
       condition wait is that the mutex is (in effect) re-acquired before calling the first cancellation cleanup
       handler.  The  effect is as if the thread were unblocked, allowed to execute up to the point of returning
       from the call  to  pthread_cond_timedwait()  or  pthread_cond_wait(),  but  at  that  point  notices  the
       cancellation   request   and   instead   of  returning  to  the  caller  of  pthread_cond_timedwait()  or
       pthread_cond_wait(), starts the thread  cancellation  activities,  which  includes  calling  cancellation
       cleanup handlers.

       A   thread  that  has  been  unblocked  because  it  has  been  canceled  while  blocked  in  a  call  to
       pthread_cond_timedwait() or pthread_cond_wait() shall not  consume  any  condition  signal  that  may  be
       directed  concurrently  at  the  condition  variable  if there are other threads blocked on the condition
       variable.

       The pthread_cond_timedwait() function shall be equivalent to pthread_cond_wait(), except that an error is
       returned  if  the  absolute  time  specified  by  abstime  passes (that is, system time equals or exceeds
       abstime) before the condition cond is signaled or broadcasted, or  if  the  absolute  time  specified  by
       abstime   has   already   been   passed   at   the   time   of   the  call.  When  such  timeouts  occur,
       pthread_cond_timedwait() shall nonetheless release and re-acquire the mutex referenced by mutex, and  may
       consume a condition signal directed concurrently at the condition variable.

       The  condition  variable  shall  have  a  clock attribute which specifies the clock that shall be used to
       measure the time specified by the abstime argument.  The  pthread_cond_timedwait()  function  is  also  a
       cancellation point.

       If  a  signal  is  delivered  to  a  thread waiting for a condition variable, upon return from the signal
       handler the thread resumes waiting for the condition variable as if it was not interrupted, or  it  shall
       return zero due to spurious wakeup.

       The  behavior  is  undefined if the value specified by the cond or mutex argument to these functions does
       not refer to an initialized condition variable or an initialized mutex object, respectively.

RETURN VALUE

       Except for [ETIMEDOUT], [ENOTRECOVERABLE], and [EOWNERDEAD], all these error checks shall act as if  they
       were  performed  immediately  at  the  beginning  of processing for the function and shall cause an error
       return, in effect, prior to modifying the state of the mutex specified by mutex or the condition variable
       specified by cond.

       Upon  successful  completion,  a  value  of  zero  shall be returned; otherwise, an error number shall be
       returned to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       These functions shall fail if:

       ENOTRECOVERABLE
              The state protected by the mutex is not recoverable.

       EOWNERDEAD
              The mutex is a robust mutex and the process containing the previous owning thread terminated while
              holding the mutex lock. The mutex lock shall be acquired by the calling thread and it is up to the
              new owner to make the state consistent.

       EPERM  The mutex type is PTHREAD_MUTEX_ERRORCHECK or the mutex is a robust mutex, and the current  thread
              does not own the mutex.

       The pthread_cond_timedwait() function shall fail if:

       ETIMEDOUT
              The time specified by abstime to pthread_cond_timedwait() has passed.

       EINVAL The  abstime argument specified a nanosecond value less than zero or greater than or equal to 1000
              million.

       These functions may fail if:

       EOWNERDEAD
              The mutex is a robust mutex and the previous owning thread  terminated  while  holding  the  mutex
              lock. The mutex lock shall be acquired by the calling thread and it is up to the new owner to make
              the state consistent.

       These functions shall not return an error code of [EINTR].

       The following sections are informative.

EXAMPLES

       None.

APPLICATION USAGE

       Applications that have assumed that non-zero return values are errors will need  updating  for  use  with
       robust  mutexes,  since  a  valid  return  for a thread acquiring a mutex which is protecting a currently
       inconsistent state is [EOWNERDEAD].  Applications that do not check the error returns, due to ruling  out
       the  possibility  of such errors arising, should not use robust mutexes. If an application is supposed to
       work with normal and robust mutexes, it should check all  return  values  for  error  conditions  and  if
       necessary take appropriate action.

RATIONALE

       If an implementation detects that the value specified by the cond argument to pthread_cond_timedwait() or
       pthread_cond_wait() does not refer to an initialized  condition  variable,  or  detects  that  the  value
       specified  by  the mutex argument to pthread_cond_timedwait() or pthread_cond_wait() does not refer to an
       initialized mutex object, it is recommended that the function should fail and report an [EINVAL] error.

   Condition Wait Semantics
       It is important to note that when pthread_cond_wait() and pthread_cond_timedwait() return without  error,
       the  associated  predicate may still be false.  Similarly, when pthread_cond_timedwait() returns with the
       timeout error, the associated predicate may be true due to an unavoidable race between the expiration  of
       the timeout and the predicate state change.

       The  application  needs to recheck the predicate on any return because it cannot be sure there is another
       thread waiting on the thread to handle the signal, and if there is not  then  the  signal  is  lost.  The
       burden is on the application to check the predicate.

       Some  implementations, particularly on a multi-processor, may sometimes cause multiple threads to wake up
       when the condition variable is signaled simultaneously on different processors.

       In general, whenever a condition wait returns, the thread has to  re-evaluate  the  predicate  associated
       with  the condition wait to determine whether it can safely proceed, should wait again, or should declare
       a timeout. A return from the wait does not imply that the associated predicate is either true or false.

       It is thus recommended that a condition wait be enclosed in the  equivalent  of  a  ``while  loop''  that
       checks the predicate.

   Timed Wait Semantics
       An  absolute  time  measure  was  chosen  for  specifying the timeout parameter for two reasons. First, a
       relative time measure can be easily implemented on top of a function that specifies  absolute  time,  but
       there  is  a  race  condition  associated  with  specifying an absolute timeout on top of a function that
       specifies relative timeouts. For example, assume  that  clock_gettime()  returns  the  current  time  and
       cond_relative_timed_wait() uses relative timeouts:

           clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &now)
           reltime = sleep_til_this_absolute_time -now;
           cond_relative_timed_wait(c, m, &reltime);

       If  the thread is preempted between the first statement and the last statement, the thread blocks for too
       long. Blocking, however, is irrelevant if an absolute timeout is used. An absolute timeout also need  not
       be recomputed if it is used multiple times in a loop, such as that enclosing a condition wait.

       For  cases  when  the  system  clock  is  advanced  discontinuously  by  an operator, it is expected that
       implementations process any timed wait expiring at an intervening time  as  if  that  time  had  actually
       occurred.

   Cancellation and Condition Wait
       A   condition   wait,   whether   timed  or  not,  is  a  cancellation  point.  That  is,  the  functions
       pthread_cond_wait() or pthread_cond_timedwait() are points where a pending (or  concurrent)  cancellation
       request  is  noticed. The reason for this is that an indefinite wait is possible at these points—whatever
       event is being waited for, even if the program is totally correct, might never occur; for  example,  some
       input  data  being awaited might never be sent. By making condition wait a cancellation point, the thread
       can be canceled and perform its cancellation cleanup  handler  even  though  it  may  be  stuck  in  some
       indefinite wait.

       A side-effect of acting on a cancellation request while a thread is blocked on a condition variable is to
       re-acquire the mutex before calling any of the cancellation cleanup handlers. This is done  in  order  to
       ensure that the cancellation cleanup handler is executed in the same state as the critical code that lies
       both before and after the call  to  the  condition  wait  function.  This  rule  is  also  required  when
       interfacing  to  POSIX  threads  from languages, such as Ada or C++, which may choose to map cancellation
       onto a language exception; this rule ensures that each exception handler guarding a critical section  can
       always  safely  depend  upon  the  fact  that  the associated mutex has already been locked regardless of
       exactly where within the critical section the exception was raised. Without this rule, there would not be
       a  uniform  rule that exception handlers could follow regarding the lock, and so coding would become very
       cumbersome.

       Therefore, since some statement has to be made regarding the state of the lock  when  a  cancellation  is
       delivered  during  a wait, a definition has been chosen that makes application coding most convenient and
       error free.

       When acting on  a  cancellation  request  while  a  thread  is  blocked  on  a  condition  variable,  the
       implementation  is  required to ensure that the thread does not consume any condition signals directed at
       that condition variable if there are any other threads waiting on that condition variable. This  rule  is
       specified  in  order to avoid deadlock conditions that could occur if these two independent requests (one
       acting on a thread and the other acting on the condition variable) were not processed independently.

   Performance of Mutexes and Condition Variables
       Mutexes are expected to be locked only for a few instructions.  This  practice  is  almost  automatically
       enforced by the desire of programmers to avoid long serial regions of execution (which would reduce total
       effective parallelism).

       When using mutexes and condition variables, one tries to ensure that the usual case is to lock the mutex,
       access  shared  data,  and  unlock the mutex. Waiting on a condition variable should be a relatively rare
       situation. For example, when implementing a read-write lock, code that  acquires  a  read-lock  typically
       needs  only  to  increment  the  count of readers (under mutual-exclusion) and return. The calling thread
       would actually wait on the condition variable only when  there  is  already  an  active  writer.  So  the
       efficiency  of  a  synchronization  operation  is  bounded  by  the  cost of mutex lock/unlock and not by
       condition wait. Note that in the usual case there is no context switch.

       This is not to say that the efficiency of condition waiting is unimportant. Since there needs  to  be  at
       least  one  context  switch  per  Ada  rendezvous,  the  efficiency of waiting on a condition variable is
       important. The cost of waiting on a condition variable should be little more than the minimal cost for  a
       context switch plus the time to unlock and lock the mutex.

   Features of Mutexes and Condition Variables
       It  had  been suggested that the mutex acquisition and release be decoupled from condition wait. This was
       rejected because it is the  combined  nature  of  the  operation  that,  in  fact,  facilitates  realtime
       implementations.  Those  implementations can atomically move a high-priority thread between the condition
       variable and the mutex in a manner that is transparent to the caller.  This  can  prevent  extra  context
       switches and provide more deterministic acquisition of a mutex when the waiting thread is signaled. Thus,
       fairness and priority issues can be dealt with directly by the scheduling discipline.   Furthermore,  the
       current condition wait operation matches existing practice.

   Scheduling Behavior of Mutexes and Condition Variables
       Synchronization  primitives  that  attempt  to interfere with scheduling policy by specifying an ordering
       rule are considered undesirable.  Threads waiting on mutexes and  condition  variables  are  selected  to
       proceed  in  an  order dependent upon the scheduling policy rather than in some fixed order (for example,
       FIFO or priority). Thus, the scheduling policy determines which thread(s) are  awakened  and  allowed  to
       proceed.

   Timed Condition Wait
       The pthread_cond_timedwait() function allows an application to give up waiting for a particular condition
       after a given amount of time. An example of its use follows:

           (void) pthread_mutex_lock(&t.mn);
               t.waiters++;
               clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, &ts);
               ts.tv_sec += 5;
               rc = 0;
               while (! mypredicate(&t) && rc == 0)
                   rc = pthread_cond_timedwait(&t.cond, &t.mn, &ts);
               t.waiters--;
               if (rc == 0 || mypredicate(&t))
                   setmystate(&t);
           (void) pthread_mutex_unlock(&t.mn);

       By making the timeout parameter absolute, it does not need to be recomputed each time the program  checks
       its  blocking  predicate.  If  the timeout was relative, it would have to be recomputed before each call.
       This would be especially difficult since such code would need to take into  account  the  possibility  of
       extra  wakeups  that  result from extra broadcasts or signals on the condition variable that occur before
       either the predicate is true or the timeout is due.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

       None.

SEE ALSO

       pthread_cond_broadcast()

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 4.12, Memory Synchronization, <pthread.h>

COPYRIGHT

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard
       for  Information  Technology  --  Portable  Operating  System  Interface  (POSIX),  The  Open  Group Base
       Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical  and  Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original
       IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee  document.
       The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any  typographical  or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have been introduced
       during  the  conversion  of  the  source  files  to  man  page  format.  To  report  such   errors,   see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .