Take the 2-minute tour ×  What is the difference b/w PRLock and
PRRWLock provided by nspr library ?  share|improve this question
add comment  2 Answers  up vote 3 down vote accepted  I don't
know anything about the library but the names suggest that one
is a standard lock and the other is a reader/writer lock. The
first always gives exclusive access, and the second allows
multiple concurrent reads but exclusive writes. For example,
pthreads api has pthread_mutex_lock/pthread_mutex_unlock and
pthread_rwlock_rdlock/pthread_rwlock_wrlock methods.
share|improve this answer +1; looking at the source they use
pthread_rwlock_rdlock/pthread_rwlock_wrlock to implement it if
PThreads are available. –  CharlesB Jun 14 '11 at 14:50 add
comment  PRLock is a simple mutex. PRRWLock is an (unfortunately
undocumented) reader-writer lock.  The only source of
documentation I can find on PRRWLock is contained within
prrwlock.h, and includes the methods one would expect for a
reader-writer lock implementation:    • Create and De