[fpc-devel] volatile variables

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On Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:54:35 +0200, Michael Schnell <mschnell at lumino.de>  
wrote:

> But if you do the same with
>
> volatile static int x;
>
> the code will stay and another thread can watch x growing in a time  
> sharing system.

No, it can't. "volatile" just ensures that accessing the variable results  
in
actual memory accesses. That does not mean cache-coherence, so another core
may still see other (as in "older") values.

> I believe that inserting some ptherad_mutex... calls will not force the  
> compiler to bother about some intermediate values of a non volatile  
> variable.

Well, then it's probably overly aggressive or buggy.

> I believe that with FPC global variables are assumed to be volatile and  
> not optimized away or cashed in registers. But what about heap-variables  
> ?

They are not volatile, I'd guess. And I don't see the need to assume they
are. You would always need proper synchronisation constructs here.

> Thus true for global variables, not necessary true for static variables  
> as they can't be accessed by a function defined in another module (I  
> don't know whether the C compiler makes a difference)

It should not. It can't possibly assume that a call to pthread_...()  
wouldn't
result in a recursive call back to the caller... ;)


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