In Vala, I can lock a null reference. Is this by design or a side-effect?
class Xyzzy {
private File file = null;
public File get_file() {
File f;
lock (file) {
if (file == null)
file = File.new_for_path("/tmp");
f = file;
}
return f;
}
}
void main() {
Xyzzy x = new Xyzzy();
stdout.printf("%s\n", x.get_file().get_path());
stdout.printf("%s\n", x.get_file().get_path());
stdout.printf("%s\n", x.get_file().get_path());
}
I think this is fine and should be the documented behavior. Because Vala
only allows locking member variables (and not "this"), being unable to lock
a nulled reference would require allocating a dummy object to lock against
or explicitly using a Mutex and forgoing lock(). I find both unappealing.
In other words, I think this is okay because it's locking access to the
reference and not locking the object itself. This seems right to me -- but
I'd feel better if I knew this won't go away in the future.
-- Jim
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