Proccess and Thread ?

[Devil Panther]

I have two questions:

1.) What is the difference between a proccess and a thread?

2.) Does windows support proccess, or is it only working with threads?


Thanks.

[golfinguy4]

Think of a process as a program. Think of a thread as a subpart of a program.

Although that description is not exact, it helps you get the gist of the difference.


Basically, processes can stand alone while threads cannot. Windows supports both.

[Devil Panther]

is there a way then to do something like the fork() in unix, only on windows?


also, I know when you place some code as part of a child proccess, it runs next to the parent proccess and not as part of it. is that the same with threads?

[Codeplug]

You use threads in Windows to simulate fork() functionality from Unix.
When a thread creates anothter thread, both threads are part of the same address space (process).

gg

[Sang-drax]

Windows supports processes, threads and fibers, which are like manually scheduled threads.

[adrianxw]

fork() creates a copy of a process, not a thread as such. It's functionality can, indeed, be simulated, but it is not the same.

[Codeplug]

No one is claiming they are the same. Since you can't clone a process in Win32, the only way to simulate it is with threads.

gg

[Devil Panther]

so... can I make a piece of code to run on it's own, next to the other code?

look, i have the next thing:

I have some code running.
in the middle of that code i have a long loop.
and then the code continues.


what i want to do is to place this long loop in such a way so it won't hold the rest of the code back, so i won't need to wait for the loop to finish, before i continue.

[Codeplug]

Multithreading for Rookies

gg

[Devil Panther]

Thank you for all your help.