Ensuring Thread Safety in Swift with Locks

2023/09/05

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Thread safety is an essential aspect of programming, and in this article, the author discusses the importance of building type-safe code to avoid data races and race conditions. The article provides a simple example of a Store type that can lead to crashes and logic errors when accessed concurrently by multiple threads. To solve this issue, the author introduces the OSAllocatedUnfairLock type, which allows for exclusive access to a variable by locking it. The article also mentions the NSRecursiveLock type, which supports recursive locking but is slower. Additionally, the author emphasizes the need to mark classes as Sendable to safely share instances between threads. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of making classes thread-safe and provides a helpful guide on using locks in Swift. This article is a must-read for developers looking to ensure thread safety in their Swift codebase.