Subj : Re: Is std::cerr thread safe
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : robertwessel2@yahoo.com
Date : Wed Jul 20 2005 09:14 pm

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> > Sean Kelly wrote:
> >
> > > The STL is guaranteed to be thread-safe
> >
> > No, it isn't (and cerr is not STL).
> >
> > It is rather considered to be a Quality of Implementation issue (you
> > will not find it in the standard) that the program at least does not
> > crash when I/O is accessed in a MT way.
>
> I actually meant that the guarantee is merely that standard library
> components will compile and operate in a multithreaded environment,
> though I admit that this seems fairly self-apparent.  In my experience,
> this mostly means that mutable global statics are either not used or
> that access to them is serialized.  Is this also a QOI issue?  I'll
> admit I haven't read the standard very closely in this regard.


The C++ standard says nothing about threads at all.  It's a QoI issue
in that you would hope that a thread aware C++ implementation would
provide at least semi-reasonable non-fatal behavior for streams in the
presence of threads, but nothing in the standard compels it to.

.