As described in http://www.gimpel.com/Discussion.cfm?ThreadID=3793 this functionality is needed.

For example, this function results in lint warning 455 (A thread mutex that had not been locked is being unlocked):

bool IsLocked()
{
    int retStat = pthread_mutex_trylock(&m_pthreadMutex);
    if (retStat == 0)
    {
        // Mutex was not locked, but is now.
        pthread_mutex_unlock(&m_pthreadMutex);
        return (false);
    }
    else if (retStat == EBUSY)
    {
        // Mutex is already locked.
        return (true);
    }
    return (false);
}