15.2.6 Old interrupt blocking APIs removed

The macros mp:without-interrupts and mp:without-preemption , which were available in LispWorks 5.1 and earlier, are no longer supported. The semantics of these macros allowed them to be used for several different purposes, which now require specific solutions.

• Atomic operations. This use was designed to make operations atomic with respect to other uses of the same macro or with respect to some other unquantified operations that were expected to be atomic, such as reading or writing a single slot in an object. Code of this kind should be converted to use locks (see Locks) or low level atomic operations (see Low level atomic operations).
• Complete operations. This use was designed to ensure that a set of operations completed without being interrupted by mp:process-interrupt , keyboard breaks and so on. See Blocking interrupts for the new approach.

The following subsections show examples of typical uses of the old interrupt blocking APIs together with their replacements. The examples use mp:without-interrupts but the ideas also apply to uses of mp:without-preemption .

15.2.6.1 Atomic increment

15.2.6.2 Atomic push/pop

15.2.6.3 Atomic push/delete

15.2.6.4 Atomic plist update

15.2.6.5 Atomic update of a data structure

15.2.6.6 Atomic access to a cache in a hash table

LispWorks User Guide and Reference Manual - 21 Dec 2011