Re: boost::thread::id()?

From: williamkempf_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-09-24 14:18:25

--- In boost_at_y..., "Peter Dimov" <pdimov_at_m...> wrote:
> class thread
> {
>     unsigned long id() const; // uniquely identifies the thread
> };
> 
> What do you think?

I think it's a pain in the @$$ to implement on POSIX ;).

Seriously, though, I did consider this and rejected it, at least for 
the short term, because it is difficult to define for POSIX 
implementations.  The "ID" on POSIX systems is an opaque type, and is 
likely a pointer and not an integral value.  For most purposes you 
don't really need this method any way, since we support operators == 
and != (I realize this isn't enough for collation, but since 
boost::thread isn't copyable there's not a lot of need for full 
collation).  The only thing I can think of that's not available 
directly is a way to print out an identification string for 
diagnostic purposes.  In that case we may be better benefitted by 
supplying a stream output operator, which would likely be easier to 
implement in a platform independant manner.

Bill Kempf