[Boost-users] Q: Stopping threads (Win32) or... the mysterious case of the thread with split personality

From: Dan Dimerman (dimerman_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-12-05 12:35:02

Hello,

I would like to ask the group if you know of an efficient and clean way to 
stop a thread.
What I've been using till now was a while loop in the function operator()() 
given to the boost::thread when created, whose condition was a boolean data 
member. This boolean was the means to stop the thread, such that when it was 
turned off, the child thread would exit the while loop and join the main 
thread.
I am seeing now that this data member is being held twice (one copy for the 
main thread and one copy for the child thread) and there's no synch between 
the two copies; so when the main thread turns it off / false, the child 
thread goes on (since its copy is still on / true) and hell breaks loose.

I am using VC7 in debug mode, so I started looking for some kind of 
flag/optimization I might be inadvertently using that makes data members 
into registers (thus explaining the copies), but couldn't find anything of 
the sort.

Any help will be greatly appreciated...

Dan

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