Java ReentrantReadWriteLocks - how to safely acquire write lock?

Question

I am using in my code at the moment a ReentrantReadWriteLock to synchronize access over a tree-like structure. This structure is large, and read by many threads at once wit

Answer 1

What you're looking for is a lock upgrade, and is not possible (at least not atomically) using the standard java.concurrent ReentrantReadWriteLock. Your best shot is unlock/lock, and then check that noone made modifications inbetween.

What you're attempting to do, forcing all read locks out of the way is not a very good idea. Read locks are there for a reason, that you shouldn't write. :)

EDIT:
As Ran Biron pointed out, if your problem is starvation (read locks are being set and released all the time, never dropping to zero) you could try using fair queueing. But your question didn't sound like this was your problem?

EDIT 2:
I now see your problem, you've actually acquired multiple read-locks on the stack, and you'd like to convert them to a write-lock (upgrade). This is in fact impossible with the JDK-implementation, as it doesn't keep track of the owners of the read-lock. There could be others holding read-locks that you wouldn't see, and it has no idea how many of the read-locks belong to your thread, not to mention your current call-stack (i.e. your loop is killing all read locks, not just your own, so your write lock won't wait for any concurrent readers to finish, and you'll end up with a mess on your hands)

I've actually had a similar problem, and I ended up writing my own lock keeping track of who's got what read-locks and upgrading these to write-locks. Although this was also a Copy-on-Write kind of read/write lock (allowing one writer along the readers), so it was a little different still.