Introduction

Most modern CPU's come with multiple cores the ability to thread a progam will allow taking advantage of these cores more fully. In a single core system using threads will allow processes to run in the background possibly waiting for input and "sleeping" this can happen while other processes continue.

This library makes use of threads on all sockets a socket is created and processed in its own thread.

The easiest way to see a thread is as a program inside a program a thread starts in a function with a reference to data supplied at thread initilization. what function is called and what data is provided is up to the programer.

On exiting the thread a cleanup function can be executed if required.

Its also possible on some systems [not windows] to handle signals that are delivered to the thread from the systems signal handler where it arrives in the thread. SIGUSR1 SIGUSR2 SIGHUP SIGALRM SIGINT and SIGTERM will be processed by thread signal handlers before been passed to the application handler.

A signal can be sent to a thread using pthread_kill external events are handled at application level.

Creating A Thread

A thread is created by calling framework_mkthread() passing the thread function, cleanup function, signal handler, refernece to data to pass to thread and options thread_option_flags.

By default NULL is returned and the thread is started not cancelable and detached its important to check framework_threadok() periodically ideally as a loop control to check if the thread should exit shutdown will be blocked till all threads return unless they cacelable.

If the application is running under framework_init() or FRAMEWORK_MAIN() then on return of the "main" function stopthreads() is run . stopthreads() flags the manager thread for shutdown and terminate all runnig threads passing a non zerop value for the join paramater will cause the process to join and block on the management thead.

See Also: threadfunc; threadcleanup; threadsighandler; thread_option_flags