[SOLVED] Passing an object to a running thread

This is a client server issue where the server creates a new thread for listening to a new client, now when the thread starts execution and during its execution the server needs to pass it an object of some X class, how's that to be done?

Originally Posted by Anisha Kaul This is a client server issue where the server creates a new thread for listening to a new client, now when the thread starts execution and during its execution the server needs to pass it an object of some X class, how's that to be done?

I think there are multiple ways to achieve this:

* process memory (all threads have access to the process' memory)
* shared memory

In this case it is important to notifiy the client threads that new data is available


* message passing (IPC)


* if the object of class X is already known when the server starts the new thread, you could pass in a void pointer via pthread_create(3)

Andi

Thanks Andi,

One more way IMO is to create a look up table, and store in it the message which the thread needs to handle and then to create a function with mutex locks which does the job of looking up! Then every thread will use that function in its turn to pick up the relevant message. Is it possible?

Yes, why not! Almost everything is possible ;-) The principle that you are describing is commonly used in master-worker scenarios. The master for example receives incoming messages, put the requests of these messages into a worker queue, wakes up one/all of the worker threads and a worker thread will finally pop the request out of the queue. IMHO, the more challenging part is the notification mechanism used (e.g. pthread cond vars) ...

Hope that helps,
Andi

Thanks Andi, its my first time with the threads, but I am confident Thanks again.