Hello concurrent world

Frances Buontempo from BuontempoConsulting


From Anthony William's "C++ concurrency in action - practical multithreading", section 1.4.1 gives a simple "Hello world" program using C++11's thread.

#include <iostream>
#include <thread>

void hello()
{
std::cout <<"Hello concurrent world!\n";
}


int main()
{
std::thread t(hello);
t.join();
}


After Matthew Wilson re-starting his series in Overload, "Quality Matters #7 Exceptions: the story so far" http://accu.org/var/uploads/journals/Overload114.pdf page 10ff, I had a nagging feeling I should put some exception handling round this.

First question, what happens if we make the hello throw an exception? For example, what would this do?

std::thread t_trouble( []{ throw std::exception("Oops");} );

It calls abort. The thread function mustn't let exceptions escape. Also, main should probably catch some exceptions; for example, maybe there aren't enough resources to start the thread yet.

#include <iostream>
#include <thread>

void hello()
{
try
{
std::cout <<"Hello concurrent world!\n";
}
catch(const std::exception& e)
{
//erm... what to do with it?
}
}


int main()
{
try
{
std::thread t(hello);//can I pass parameters? Nico says I can to async (page 964)
t.join(); //Nico says we can do a t.detach and when main exits it will get stopped
}
catch(const std::system_error& e) //pulled in by thread I presume
{
if(e.code() == std::errc::resource_unavailable_try_again)
{
std::cout << "Try again\n";
}
}
catch(const std::exception& e)
{
std::cout << e.what() << '\n';
}
}

Right, so now we are ignoring any exceptions that get thrown.
What should I do with any exceptions I get in a function that's sent to a thread? I could use std::exception_ptr, and std::rethrow_exception when a client tries to get the result. It might be better if I read all of Anthony's book (esp Chapter 8) and use std::packaged_task instead.

accu-general (http://accu.org/index.php/mailinglists) helpfully told me to read all the chapters in the book concurrently.

Writing: Bug Hunting

Pete Goodliffe from Pete Goodliffe

The latest  C Vu magazine from ACCU is out now. It contains my latest Becoming a Better Programer column. This month it's called Bug Hunting and, as you might guess, is about the art of debugging code.

This was inspired by conversations with Greg Law in the lead up to the 2013 ACCU conference.

About a month without Google Reader

The Lone C++ Coder's Blog from The Lone C++ Coder&#039;s Blog

As a bit of an RSS junkie - see previous post - I had to go look for alternatives to Google Reader. I’ve been a feedly user on and off for a few years but I was never that taken with it. It does seem to do mostly do what it says on the tin and having various tablet apps available for feedly is a good thing, but it tends to run into a few issues with high-volume feeds (craigslist feeds, I’m looking at you).