pthread function from a class

Question

Let\'s say I have a class such as

class c { 
    // ...
    void *print(void *){ cout << \"Hello\"; }
}

And then I have a vector of c

Answer 1

C++ : How to pass class member function to pthread_create()?

http://thispointer.com/c-how-to-pass-class-member-function-to-pthread_create/

typedef void * (*THREADFUNCPTR)(void *);

class C { 
   // ...
   void *print(void *) { cout << "Hello"; }
}

pthread_create(&threadId, NULL, (THREADFUNCPTR) &C::print, NULL);

Answer 2

The above answers are good, but in my case, 1st approach that converts the function to be a static didn't work. I was trying to convert exiting code to move into thread function but that code had lots to references to non-static class members already. The second solution of encapsulating into C++ object works, but has 3-level wrappers to run a thread.

I had an alternate solution that uses existing C++ construct - 'friend' function, and it worked perfect for my case. An example of how I used 'friend' (will use the above same example for names showing how it can be converted into a compact form using friend)

    class MyThreadClass
    {
    public:
       MyThreadClass() {/* empty */}
       virtual ~MyThreadClass() {/* empty */}

       bool Init()
       {
          return (pthread_create(&_thread, NULL, &ThreadEntryFunc, this) == 0);
       }

       /** Will not return until the internal thread has exited. */
       void WaitForThreadToExit()
       {
          (void) pthread_join(_thread, NULL);
       }

    private:
       //our friend function that runs the thread task
       friend void* ThreadEntryFunc(void *);

       pthread_t _thread;
    };

    //friend is defined outside of class and without any qualifiers
    void* ThreadEntryFunc(void *obj_param) {
    MyThreadClass *thr  = ((MyThreadClass *)obj_param); 

    //access all the members using thr->

    return NULL;
    }

Ofcourse, we can use boost::thread and avoid all these, but I was trying to modify the C++ code to not use boost (the code was linking against boost just for this purpose)

Answer 3

My first answer ever in the hope that it'll be usefull to someone : I now this is an old question but I encountered exactly the same error as the above question as I'm writing a TcpServer class and I was trying to use pthreads. I found this question and I understand now why it was happening. I ended up doing this:

#include <thread>

method to run threaded -> void* TcpServer::sockethandler(void* lp) {/*code here*/}

and I call it with a lambda -> std::thread( [=] { sockethandler((void*)csock); } ).detach();

that seems a clean approach to me.