Basic GUI and odd thread error

[woofer]

I want to do a simple gui for an otherwise unglamorous program, but I want to use only code that's already included with C++ (I'm using Fedora with KDE. Someone mentioned QT already, but I couldn't find a good command reference for it). "Back in the day" I would use ascii to represent windows (you remember those ancient DOS utilities right?). That would probably work too if I could only remember the commands for outputting characters to the screen.

Anyway, problem 2. I've threaded a function call using pthread_create and all is well. It execute flawlessly 303 times then gets stuck. I've verified that the loop that the thread call is in continues to function, but the counter I'm using to restrict the number of threads gets stuck which suggests that after a while, the threads are not exiting the function. I don't have the actual code on this computer, but I'll try to approximate here:

#define THREADS_TO_LAUNCH=1000;
#define MAX_THREADS=20;
int numthreads=0;
int thread_count=0;

void *threaded(void *nothing)
{
  ...
  do some stuff
  ...

  // As the thread exits, the last thing I want to do is decrement 
  // the number of active threads and increment the number of 
  // total threads launched

  numthreads--;
  thread_count++;
}

int main()
{
  while (threads_count < THREADS_TO_LAUNCH)
  {
     if (numthreads < MAX_THREADS)
     {
       numthreads++;
       pthread_create(NULL,NULL,threaded,NULL);
     }
  }

}

Anyway, the code all works splendidly, but hangs after 303 launches every time. The main loop never ends because the threads stop exiting or stop decrementing the numthreads variable (I can't tell which). Either way, the loop goes on endlessly. Any ideas? This is a very strange error that I'm sure someone else could see instantly, but I just can't.

[Salem]

Perhaps

volatile int numthreads=0;
volatile int thread_count=0;

[woofer]

Additional info:

I did some more testing and found out that after the 303rd thread call, the pthread_create function returns an error code of 12. I realize this may be a newb question, but how do I find out what that actually means? The man pages show EAGAIN, EPERM, and EATTR, but those aren't defined so how do I test them?

Even then, why would any of those trigger after 303 threads? I'm restricting the maximum number at a time to 20 so it shouldn't be hitting a thread limit.

[woofer]

Perhaps

volatile int numthreads=0;
volatile int thread_count=0;

Good thinking. I tried it, but unfortunately, it behaves exactly the same way.

[woofer]

Additional info 2:

I found a link on google (somehow) that lists error code 12 as being a ENOMEM error (would be nice if that were documented :/).

Assuming that's the case, why am I getting this error? The two classess defined in the the function I'm calling are both properly deleted at the end of the function and exiting the called function should delete the thread automatically.

Is this a simple memory leak?

[Salem]

> but those aren't defined so how do I test them?
Errors are listed in errno.h

Also
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?pthread_join+3
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?pthread_exit+3
I think you need a more organised exit of the thread rather than just falling off the end.

[woofer]

> but those aren't defined so how do I test them?
Errors are listed in errno.h

Also
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?pthread_join+3
http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?pthread_exit+3
I think you need a more organised exit of the thread rather than just falling off the end.

So are you suggesting an explicit call to pthread_exit() at the end of the function? I tried that and it didn't make any difference though...

[m2kcoder]

You may add

pthread_detach(pthread_self());

to the body of your thread function.

[woofer]

Thanks for the help. I managed to fix it by changing it to a for loop that just instantiates the full MAX_THREADS number of threads from the beginning. I then moved the while loop into the main function of the thread so each thread continues to operate until a global variable signals that it's time to stop. It works basically the same way, but I don't run out of memory and I lose the overhead from creating and destroying threads constantly.