http://*.com/questions/20516773/stdunique-lockstdmutex-or-stdlock-guardstdmutex
The difference is that you can lock and unlock a std::unique_lock
. std::lock_guard
will be locked only once on construction and unlocked on destruction.
So for usecase B you definitely need a std::unique_lock
for the condition variable. In case A it depends whether you need to relock the guard.
std::unique_lock
has other features that allow it to e.g.: be constructed without locking the mutex immediately but to build the RAII wrapper (see here).
Lock guards can be used when you simply need a wrapper for a limited scope, e.g.: a member function:
void member_foo() {
std::lock_guard<mutex_type> lock(this->my_mutex);
...
}
To clarify a question by chmike, by default std::lock_guard
and std::unique_lock
are the same. So in the above case, you could replace std::lock_guard
with std::unique_lock
. However, std::unique_lock
might have a tad more overhead.