Threading with C++

[milt]

Hello,

Lately I've been coding a lot in C++, and I'm really starting to like it. Right now I'm working on a project that is basically a network chat. I use Borland C++ Builder 6, which isn't too bad. Anyways, I've figured out how to make connections with sockets, etc. Now that I've figured this out, I need to know about threading.

I want to thread each connection, and from my understanding threading with C++ is quite complicated. I heard that it does not have direct features for it, so you have to code it yourself. Is this true? Is there a Thread class? I've tried Googling.... not much info there.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[arul]

CodeProject has everything.
http://www.codeproject.com/threads/

(edit)
To be more specific, here's nice article about threading
http://www.codeproject.com/threads/cthread.asp
(/edit)

[Sep102]

You should also check out the portable threading library in Boost's libraries.
http://www.boost.org/doc/html/threads.html

[milt]

Thanks for the info guys, I'll be looking more into it.

After reading through all of it, I'm guessing that there definitley is no built in threading in C++. As for the threading libraries, are those just classes that you add to your project and then learn how to use them?

[Sep102]

I don't know about CThread from CodeProject, but it would seem you could just drop it in and use it from the couple of seconds I glanced at it. As for boost.Thread, you would need to first install the Boost libraries, add the path to them into whatever lists paths for the development environment you are using (for example, in VS 2005, add the directory to the VC++ Directories for Include files in the Projects and Solutions tree in the Options dialog). Then you can just include the files you need for the Thread library (which should be <boost/thread.hpp>) and use the classes as per the Boost.Thread documentation (which I posted a link to earlier).

[Zippy]

No, there aren't any built in threading classes for C++... but at it's heart windows threading isn't that complicated.

Here's a simple example which I am coding directly from my brain to this post
(sorry for the lack of indent, I'm too lazy to open up VS right now)

#include <windows.h>
class Thread
{
public:
Thread() : _Handle( NULL ), _Id( 0 )
{
}

~Thread()
{
if ( _Handle )
TerminateThread( _Handle );
}

HANDLE GetHandle() const
{
return _Handle;
}

DWORD GetID() const
{
return _Id;
}

bool Start()
{
if ( !_Handle )
{
_Handle = CreateThread( NULL, 0, _ThreadStartProc, (void*)this, 0, &_Id );
return (bool)(_Handle != NULL);
}
else
{
return false;
}
}

protected:
virtual DWORD _ThreadMain() = 0;

private:
static DWORD WINAPI _ThreadStartProc( void *ptr )
{
if ( ptr )
return ((Thread*)ptr)->_ThreadMain();
else
return 0xFFFFFFFF;
}

HANDLE _Handle;
DWORD _Id;
};

Pretty simple, no?

All your function reference needs: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de..._functions.asp

[Zippy]

BTW if you are ever considering cross platform, there is a windows .dll available which implements the posix (pthreads) library. Using this makes it extremely simple to port threaded applications (assuming of course all the other code was already portable).

[milt]

Sweet, thank you very much Zippy for the help and information.

I'll check it out and post back my results

[noobie]

stay away from circular tables