Uses of persistent data structures in non-functional languages
- by Ray Toal
Languages that are purely functional or near-purely functional benefit from persistent data structures because they are immutable and fit well with the stateless style of functional programming.
But from time to time we see libraries of persistent data structures for (state-based, OOP) languages like Java. A claim often heard in favor of persistent data structures is that because they are immutable, they are thread-safe.
However, the reason that persistent data structures are thread-safe is that if one thread were to "add" an element to a persistent collection, the operation returns a new collection like the original but with the element added. Other threads therefore see the original collection. The two collections share a lot of internal state, of course -- that's why these persistent structures are efficient.
But since different threads see different states of data, it would seem that persistent data structures are not in themselves sufficient to handle scenarios where one thread makes a change that is visible to other threads. For this, it seems we must use devices such as atoms, references, software transactional memory, or even classic locks and synchronization mechanisms.
Why then, is the immutability of PDSs touted as something beneficial for "thread safety"? Are there any real examples where PDSs help in synchronization, or solving concurrency problems? Or are PDSs simply a way to provide a stateless interface to an object in support of a functional programming style?
