Subj : Re: Threading and Timeouts
To   : comp.programming.threads
From : MC
Date : Tue Jul 19 2005 03:59 am

Thanks to both for your replies!  I probably should have mentioned
that I'm not using sockets--I'm using the Windows Internet (WinINet)
API so, although I don't know much about select()/poll(), I'm guessing
those are not an option for me.  I do like the suggestion of just
letting the synchronous call complete normally after the timeout.
I'll try that.

Thanks again,
Craig

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 18:17:24 -0400, Joe Seigh <jseigh_01@xemaps.com>
wrote:

>MC wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Please let me know if there's a more appropriate group for my
>> question--perhaps a Windows group.  I suspect it's more of a general
>> threading Q though...
>> 
>> First off, I'm in the WinAPI environment and I'm finding that
>> asynchronous API calls for connecting to an FTP server are very
>> tedious.  I'd prefer not to deal with all the states and handles if
>> possible--hence the idea of using synchronous API calls in a separate
>> thread.  Here's the question: if the main thread creates a worker
>> thread and the worker makes a synchronous call--say to connect to the
>> FTP server--what's the best way to implement a timeout on that call?
>> What I've thought of so far is:
>> 
>> main thread starts a timer
>> main thread starts worker thread
>> if timer ticks before worker is complete then terminate worker thread
>> 
>> However, according to MSDN, terminating a thread should only be used
>> as a last resort because it doesn't do proper cleanup.  But then how
>> else can a timeout be implemented, given that the worker thread is
>> busy in a synchronous API call?  Am I doing this all wrong??
>> 
>
>Use non-blocking i/o with select() or poll().  Or just indicate i/o
>has timed out without "canceling" it, just let the i/o complete normally.
>Socket connections can't be shutdown instantaneously anyway.

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