[Threads-devel] Intel compiler issue and boost::thread

Subject: [Threads-devel] Intel compiler issue and boost::thread
From: Andy Schneider (aschneider_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-08-06 11:14:57

Hi,

We have some code that looks like this:

void
fileProcessorFunction ()
{
       // ... some implementation ...
}

Later we do:

new boost::thread(fileProcessorFunction);

We found, using Intel C++ compiler v12 on Windows with boost 1.47 that our application crashed in both Debug and Release.

This constructor ends up initializing thread_info with the result of make_thread_info thus:

template <class F>
thread(F&& f) :
  thread_info(make_thread_info(static_cast<F&&>(f)))
{
    start_thread()
}

which maps into assembly that takes f and then dereferences it and passes it to make_thread_info so the thread_data member ends up having not the function pointer f that it should have but instead a pointer equal to the first 4 bytes of what f was pointing at. Things go downhill from there.

We noticed that removing the static_cast (as below) resolved this issue.

template <class F>
thread(F&& f) :
  thread_info(f)
{
    start_thread()
}
Clearly there's a compiler defect at play but I was wondering why the static_cast <F&&> in the first place? Does this result in a valuable optimization that's subverted by removing it?

Thanks,

Andy

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