Example

Let us see Arc and Mutex in action:

use std::thread;
// use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};

fn main() {
    let v = vec![10, 20, 30];
    let handle = thread::spawn(|| {
        v.push(10);
    });
    v.push(1000);

    handle.join().unwrap();
    println!("v: {v:?}");
}

Possible solution:

use std::sync::{Arc, Mutex};
use std::thread;

fn main() {
    let v = Arc::new(Mutex::new(vec![10, 20, 30]));

    let v2 = Arc::clone(&v);
    let handle = thread::spawn(move || {
        let mut v2 = v2.lock().unwrap();
        v2.push(10);
    });

    {
        let mut v = v.lock().unwrap();
        v.push(1000);
    }

    handle.join().unwrap();

    println!("v: {v:?}");
}

Notable parts:

  • v is wrapped in both Arc and Mutex, because their concerns are orthogonal.
    • Wrapping a Mutex in an Arc is a common pattern to share mutable state between threads.
  • v: Arc<_> needs to be cloned as v2 before it can be moved into another thread. Note move was added to the lambda signature.
  • Blocks are introduced to narrow the scope of the LockGuard as much as possible.