Is it possible to provide a setter function in my computational expression? - multithreading

Question

I'm trying to write an F# computational expression that permits reading and writing thread-safe variables only from within a critical section.
I've got a type, ThreadSafeVar<'t> that wraps a value, a CriticalSection<'t> and a computational expression builder, LockContext, as follows:
// wraps a value and restricts access to it
type ThreadSafeVar<'t> (value: 't) =
member val internal Value = value with get, set
// Encapsulates a critical section
type CriticalSection<'t> =
private
{ LockObj: obj
fn: unit -> 't }
static member Lock(lc: CriticalSection<'t>) = lock lc.LockObj lc.fn
// Expression builder for a locked context
type LockContext () =
member internal this.SyncRoot = obj()
member this.Return(value: 'v) = value
member this.ReturnFrom(value: ThreadSafeVar<'t>) = value.Value
member __.Bind(value: ThreadSafeVar<'t>, fn: 't -> 'u) = fn value.Value
// returns a CriticalSection
member this.Run(fn : unit -> 'u) = { LockObj = this.SyncRoot
fn=fn }
.
.
.
Reading the thread-safe values from within a lock context is simple enough thanks to Bind. e.g.
let lockedInt = ThreadSafeVar(1) // create a thread-safe variable
let context = LockContext()
let wrapperVal = context {
let! i = lockedInt // get the wrapper value inside lockedInt
return i
} |> CriticalSection.Lock
But I'm struggling to understand how to implement a means setting the value from within a LockContext instance. The approach I've thus taken is to implement a custom operation called, for instance, setVal. I've included my attempts thus far but I'm afraid they'd just muddy the waters. It seems that custom operations operate upon the computation built so far within the expression, encoded as a tuple, but I don't see that this is required in my case.
Any hints, pointing to resources, or direct help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I'm not at all sure of the wisdom of this, but I came up with something based on the State monad that might work for you. First, define a "stateful" function as one that takes a ThreadSafeVar and returns some type of result:
ThreadSafeVar<'state> -> 'result
We then put that signature into a type that represents a stateful computation:
type Stateful<'state, 'result> =
MkStateful of (ThreadSafeVar<'state> -> 'result)
Now we need a way to run such a computation safely using a given TSV:
let run (tsv : ThreadSafeVar<_>) (MkStateful f) =
lock tsv (fun () -> f tsv)
Note that I've gotten rid of your CriticalSection type and instead just lock the TSV itself.
Next, we need a way to lift a pure value into a stateful computation:
let lift value =
MkStateful (fun _ -> value)
And a way to bind two stateful computations together:
let bind binder stateful =
MkStateful (fun tsv ->
run tsv stateful
|> binder
|> run tsv)
Defining the builder is then trivial:
type LockContext () =
member __.Return(value) = lift value
member __.Bind(stateful, binder) = bind binder stateful
let context = LockContext()
We also need helper computations for setting and getting a value safely:
let getValue =
MkStateful (fun tsv ->
tsv.Value)
let setValue value =
MkStateful (fun tsv ->
tsv.Value <- value)
Putting it all together, we can define a computation that increments the value of a TSV:
let comp =
context {
let! oldValue = getValue
let newValue = oldValue + 1
do! setValue newValue
return newValue
}
And we can run it like this:
let lockedInt = ThreadSafeVar(1)
let result = comp |> run lockedInt
printfn "%A" result // output is: 2
You can see the full solution and try it yourself here.