Subj : Re: Main thread going away but worker threads executing?
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : doug
Date : Tue Jul 19 2005 12:19 am


"David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> wrote in message 
news:dbguov$gee$1@nntp.webmaster.com...
>
> "Kev" <krr@user.doma.in> wrote in message 
> news:Pine.SOL.4.63.0507181045340.12475@conquest.OCF.Berkeley.EDU...
>
>> I have been under the impression that this behavior is expected in C# but 
>> that the opposite is true in C. (If the main thread dies, everything 
>> dies.)
>
>    The C language has no support for threads. But every threading standard 
> I know of implements fully symettric threads where the "main thread" is in 
> no way special.
>

Is that right?  I may be mishtaken, but if (e.g. on linux, pthreads) my 
main() exits while other threads are running I think the program as a whole 
does die.
If I call pthread_exit() from the main() thread, the program continues until 
all threads exit.

Docs (from HP, so appears AIX uses same model.  I used solaris a while back, 
thinkg it does same)

 An implicit call to pthread_exit() is made when a thread returns from its 
start routine. The function's return value serves as the thread's exit 
status (see pthread_create(3T)). If the main thread returns from main() 
without calling pthread_exit(), the process will exit using the return value 
from main() as the exit status. If the main thread calls pthread_exit(), the 
process will continue executing until the last thread terminates or a thread 
calls exit(). After the last thread in the process terminates, the process 
will exit with an exit status of zero.

>    DS
>
>

.