Re: out of scope pointers in threads

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:47:04 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<84abaf8b-d059-4aa8-84d9-07dc86ceaa8c@k19g2000yqg.googlegroups.com>
uche wrote:

I am trying to send a pointer to the thread below; however,
when the thread gets executed, the pointer goes out of scope .
How do I fix it ?


What is "data"? Is it a data type, or a pointer to a data type?
You seem to use it both ways.

int mywrite(char* id, int number_of_characters, char char_array)
{
  HANDLE Producer;

  DWORD ThId;

  //global_char = char_array;

  //create mutual exlusion for producer process to write into the buffer
  //create producer thread and start the function for inserting character=

s

  //mywriteTh is the entry point of the producer

  ptr =new data;


OK, we have 'data' as a data type, and 'ptr' is, I suppose a
data*.

  ptr->character = char_array;


Again, what is char_array? Where does it come from?

  cout<<ptr->character<<endl;
  ptr->id = id;
  cout<<ptr->id<<endl;

  Producer = (HANDLE) CreateThread (NULL, 0, mywriteTh,
reinterpret_cast<data> (ptr) , 0, &ThId); // i want to send the
pointer to this thread


Anytime you need a reinterpret_cast for a function argument, you
should be asking yourself questions. If I understand the
interface description of CreateThread at MSDN (Microsoft seems
to go in a lot for obfuscated typenames), you don't need any
cast at all; just pass the pointer. (I'm guessing here that
LPVOID is a void*; where the L comes from, I don't know.)

  cout<<ptr->id<<endl;
  return 0;
}

DWORD WINAPI mywriteTh(data ptr)


And according to the documentation, this function must take a
void* (well, an LPVOID) as well, not a data. (The documentation
shows some __in as well. More obfuscation; I don't think it
means anything.)

{
 //global_char is available here

 DWORD tId = GetCurrentThreadId();

 data *ptr_data = reinterpret_cast<data *>(ptr); // pointer is goes
out of scope


Again, a reinterpret_cast is a no-no. You need a static_cast of
the void* to the exact type of the pointer that was converted to
void*, above.

}


As for "going out of scope", of course the pointer goes out of
scope. But you're passing a copy of it to the thread, and the
memory it points to is still there.

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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