Avoid copying NSMutableArray for reading with multithreaded writes

Question

I have a class that uses a mutable array that is modified once after a lot of reads (new items arrive).

The problem is that when times comes to mutate the array, rea

Answer 1

in this case, you would consider using a read/write lock. Cocoa doesn't provide them, but pthread_rwlock_t is available in pthreads interfaces -- declared in pthread.h. note that this is going to be much more efficient (for your usage) than @synchronized, or even a plain lock.