"Lance Ellinghaus" <lellinghaus(at)yahoo(dot)com> writes:
> Is there an easy way to test the lock on a user level lock without actually
> issuing the lock?
Why would you ever want to do such a thing? If you "test" the lock but
don't actually acquire it, someone else might acquire the lock half a
microsecond after you look at it --- and then what does your test result
mean? It's certainly unsafe to take any action based on assuming that
the lock is free.
I suspect what you really want is a conditional acquire, which you can
get (in recent versions) using the dontWait parameter to LockAcquire.
regards, tom lane