Topics Not Covered

Several features of the Pthreads API are not covered in this tutorial. These are listed below. See the Pthread Library Routines Reference section for more information.

• Thread Scheduling
  • Implementations will differ on how threads are scheduled to run. In most cases, the default mechanism is adequate.
  • The Pthreads API provides routines to explicitly set thread scheduling policies and priorities which may override the default mechanisms.
  • The API does not require implementations to support these features.
• Keys: Thread-Specific Data
  • As threads call and return from different routines, the local data on a thread’s stack comes and goes.
  • To preserve stack data you can usually pass it as an argument from one routine to the next, or else store the data in a global variable associated with a thread.
  • Pthreads provides another, possibly more convenient and versatile, way of accomplishing this through keys.
• Mutex Protocol Attributes and Mutex Priority Management for the handling of “priority inversion” problems.
  • Condition Variable Sharing—across processes
  • Thread Cancellation
  • Threads and Signals
  • Sychronization constructs—barriers and locks