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

I suppose the ReentrantLock is motivated by a recursive traversal of the tree:

public void doSomething(Node node) {
  // Acquire reentrant lock
  ... // Do something, possibly acquire write lock
  for (Node child : node.childs) {
    doSomething(child);
  }
  // Release reentrant lock
}

Can't you refactor your code to move the lock handling outside of the recursion ?

public void doSomething(Node node) {
  // Acquire NON-reentrant read lock
  recurseDoSomething(node);
  // Release NON-reentrant read lock
}

private void recurseDoSomething(Node node) {
  ... // Do something, possibly acquire write lock
  for (Node child : node.childs) {
    recurseDoSomething(child);
  }
}