MultithreadedProgrammingWiththeWin32API.ppt

Multithreaded Programming With the Win32 API Andrew Tucker Debugger Development Lead March 13, 1998 What We Will Cover Caveats Multithreaded feature sets differ between NT, Win95 and CE and versions of the same OS Intro to Multithreaded Concepts Intro to Multithreaded Concepts Scheduling - cooperative vs preemptive Preemptive - allow a thread to execute for a specified amount of time and then automatically performs a “context switch” to change to a new thread (e.G. NT, win95, WCE) Cooperative - performs context switch only when the user specifies (“manually scheduled”) Win16 is neither: multitasking, but not multithread Starting and Stopping Threads CreateThread API HANDLE CreateThread( LPSECURITY_ATTRIBUTES lpsa, // pointer to thread security attributes DWORD dwStackSize, // initial thread stack size, in bytes LPTHREAD_START_ROUTINE lpStartAddress, // pointer to thread function LPVOID lpParameter, // argument for new thread DWORD dwCreationFlags, // creation flags LPDWORD lpThreadId // pointer to returned thread identifier ); _beginthreadex CRT function unsigned long _beginthreadex( void *security, unsigned stack_size, unsigned ( __stdcall *start_address )( void * ), void *arglist, unsigned initflag, unsigned *thrdaddr ); So, what’s the difference? Starting and Stopping Threads Difference is the initialization of the CRT library Linking with multithreaded CRT is not enough Starting and Stopping Threads Thread functions have the following prototype: DWORD WINAPI ThreadFunc(PVOID pv); It is very useful to use pv as a pointer to a user-defined structure to pass extra data Starting and Stopping Threads A return will automatically call the respective _endthreadex or EndThread API A return does not close the handle from the creation routine (user must call CloseHandle to avoid resource leak) Threads should be self-terminating (avoi