Re: Threading issue in next standard

From:
"kanze" <kanze@gabi-soft.fr>
Newsgroups:
comp.std.c++
Date:
Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:41:18 CST
Message-ID:
<1156166603.748119.235940@i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>
Jiang wrote:

Several days ago, James Kanze said that thread issues will be
addressed in next standard.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.c++.moderated/browse_frm/thread/7900a13685a8b8c2/47b6d8f6ce67f963#47b6d8f6ce67f963


I said that it was highly likely. We can't be 100% sure until
the standard is adopted, but the committee is definitly working
on it, and it seems to have a fairly high priority.

If this is true, I would like to know that:

1. How will the language and library overlap?


That is part of what is still under discussion. Some things
must be handled at the language level.

   That is, threading will be purposed by library extension
   (like boost.thread), or adding new language constructs,
   such as keywords like "synchronized"?


Or something in between. I'm pretty sure we won't see a
"synchronized" keyword, like the Java fiasco. (At least I hope
so, and to date, I haven't heard anyone proposing it.) And I'm
equally sure that the language itself will be modified to "know"
about threading in some ways---if nothing else, threading will
introduce a whole new world of possible undefined behaviors.

2. Is it possible that in the recent future we
   will have a C++ binding for threading? If not, why?


I feel fairly certain that in C++0x, it will be possible to
start threads, join them, and synchronize them, possibly in
different ways (low-level, lock free and mutex or something
similar). What it will look like is still an open topic---if I
had to guess, I'd say that at least parts of it might look
something like boost::threads.

3. This is maybe a little bit off-topic, but it is said
   that Bjarne Stroustrup has been working with
   concurrent programming for at least 20 years,
   for what reason he (together with committee
   members) did not add threading to the language?


He wanted to be able to implement it under Unix at the time?

Historically, concurrent programming didn't always involve what
we consider threads today. There are (or at least were) many
models. (What ever happened to the transputer and Occam?)

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