thread-safe strings

[brent@linux1.org]

Hi,

	I'll open my mouth and announce my ignorance... I'm relatively new
to c++, esp. STL, and I have a vague understanding of thread-safety,
but looking I'd like to try to help if I can.

	I've looked over the code for basic_string a bit and see that there
is a problem with _M_state being accessed from multiple threads. Are
there other problems that I'm missing here? If not couldn't we just
put a mutex on _M_state?

	Also, how can I verify that string is thread-safe after mucking 
around with it? a test case?

Your patience is appreciated.
	brent