RE: [BULK] Re: Exiting threads safely
- From: "Sean Farrow" <sean.farrow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2007 14:24:49 -0000
Hi Will:
What are the benefits of using BeginTgheadEx over the standard thread
proc, wich is what I am usin at the moment?
And What does WaitForMultipleObjects return?
Sean.
________________________________
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Will Pearson
Sent: 30 December 2007 14:16
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [BULK] Re: Exiting threads safely
Importance: Low
Hi Sean,
I think that using a process finding mechanism might result in a race
condition. The main thread for the application, and thus the
application itself, might terminate before your process finding
mechanism has had a chance to run.
Using multiple WaitForSingleObjects also has its problems. A thread
might nnot be waiting on the object that signals process shutdown. If
the other event isn't signalled to free the thread then the thread won't
get an opportunity to wait on the event that does signal process
shutdown, and the thread will be forceably terminated when the
application terminates without processing the termination event.
If you want a clean termination of the thread then
WaitForMultipleObjects will probably provide the best chance of getting
it. The way I've used WaitForMultipleObjects to accomplish this in the
past is to have one of the events indicate that the thread should
terminate. I then use a while loop, just as you have done, and process
the event ID, which is the value returned by WaitForMultipleObjects,
using a switch statement. If the event that signalled the thread
indicates that the thread should terminate then the appropriate case in
the switch statement sets the bool value used for the while loop to
either true or false, depending on which one I've used to exit the while
loop. So, the code looks something like:
while (Run == TRUE) {
Event = WaitForMultipleObjects(2, hFoo, FALSE, INFINITE);
switch (Event) {
case 0: Run = FALSE;
break;
case 1: // do something
break;
} // switch
} // while
In the above example I've placed the event that signals the termination
of the thread at array index 0 of the array containing the wait handles.
WaitForMultipleObjects will return the lowest numbered event as the
return value if multiple events are signalled at the same time. Placing
the termination event at array index 0 ensures that the termination
event will always be returned if it is signalled and that the loop will
exit when it is signalled.
Using WaitForMultipleObjects doesn't completely eliminate the
possibility that the process can terminate without your thread receiving
the termination signal but it does reduce the possibility that this
could happen compared to using two WaitForSingleObject calls. If your
thread is doing some work and not waiting on an event then there is
still the possibility that the application's main thread could exit
before your thread processes the termination signal. If you want your
thread to cleanly terminate before the process terminates because you
need to do some clean up or something then you need to serialise the
execution. The way I usually go about this is to have the application's
main thread wait on an event until the other thread has done its clean
up or whatever work it has to do. Just before the thread exits, usually
just before the end of the function that I passed in as the starting
function to a call to _beginthreadex, I set the event that the
application's main thread is waiting on to signelled. This serialises
execution and ensures that the clean up code or whatever work I want
done will be done before the process terminates.
Will
----- Original Message -----
From: Sean Farrow <mailto:sean.farrow@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 11:49 AM
Subject: Exiting threads safely
Hi list:
I am in a situation wher i am creating threads in a com server.
The threads use WaitForSingleObject to process cross process
communication. I need to exit these two created threads when --and only
when an application exits. is the safest way to do thi using a process
finding mechanism (I aleady have this in place anyway) or using a second
event. If the latter, can I use this in a while lop like the following:
while(WaitForSingleObject(hevent, infinite) !=0)
{
code if the thread isn't to exit--i.e wait on the first event.
}
exit the thread using an ExitThread call.
Any help apreciated.
Sean.
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