Question

Boost threads

Asked by: TwentyFourSeven

Curiosity got the better of me when I had a few minutes to spare on the weekend and I thought I'd see what cool stuff boost threads was capable of.  There are not many examples out there, but I found a couple and created something simple of my own as a result.

But I want to see it do something more interesting....let's say I've got a long log file I want to read into a vector for text analysis or whatever.

Is it possible to use threads either for the actual "getline" process (e.g. two threads, one processing odd numbered lines and one processing even) ?  Or just "handing over" the output from "getline" to a thread or two ?

Any examples would be much appreciated !

For those that don't kow me yet in the C zone.... not homework, not work work .... just a plain curious C++ newbie.... ;-)

while (!is.eof()) {
		std::getline(is, lineString, lEnd);
		if (!lineString.length())
			continue;
// do stuff
}

                                  
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Asked On
2009-10-26 at 10:06:26ID24844288
Topic

C++ Programming Language

Participating Experts
3
Points
250
Comments
10

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Answers

 

by: evilrixPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:27:04ID: 25664576

The problem you have is that as with any multi-threaded application if you are accessing shared resources you have to be sure it's thread safe. Accessing a stream in a multi-threaded way will not work as you want because the getline is not atomic in this respect. If the thread context switches whilst getline is part way through reading a line the other thread will start reading where this left off. What you can do is provide mutual exclusion semantics (using a boost mutex) so only one thread can access and read the stream at a time but this means each thread is only able to serially process the stream so it probably won't make things any faster, just more complex.

The rule of thumb is if you think you need to use threads, think again. If you still think you do then check one more time. If, on the third check you conclude you do then proceeded... carefully.

 

by: TwentyFourSevenPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:30:09ID: 25664608

evilrix:,

Heh.... well, I was so impressed by the fact that the magic of threads completed a short running process before a long running process despite them being listed  (1) Long (2) short in main() .......it just left me wanting to know more ;-)

 

by: evilrixPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:42:03ID: 25664730

>> it just left me wanting to know more ;-)
Understandably. There are many things you need to be aware of though when writing multi-threaded applications. there be BIG dragons in there. For a start the whole thing becomes non-deterministic. You can no longer just attached a debugger to see why it fails because the very act of attaching the debugger can change the behaviour. Also, you need to know about Deadlocks, Race Conditions, Priority Inversion and Thread Starvation and False Sharing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_inversion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_condition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock
http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217500206
http://www.wilsonmar.com/1threads.htm

Be aware that sharing data cross thread isn't even simple. If you don't make it volatile then the compile may cache the value in one thread so changing it in another isn't even seen!
http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/15147

Reading and writing to intrinsics isn't even guaranteed to be atomic with the special case of std::sig_atomic_t, which is a special C++ type guaranteed to be read/written in one instruction.
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/clibrary/csignal/sig_atomic_t/

By all means, try stuff out but just read up on these things first so you know who your enemy is ;)

BTW: Some of your allies in arms are Mutex's, Events, Semaphore, Critical Sections, Conditions variables.

 

by: jkrPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:42:53ID: 25664739

If you want to go for threads, you should use a problem that can be parallelized in a nice way, and I'm not sure whether line-by-line file reading necessarily is one, but anyway, that could be like the following (adapted from http://www.highscore.de/cpp/boost/multithreading.html)

#include <boost/thread.hpp> 
#include <iostream> 
#include <vector> 
#include <string>
#include <cstdlib> 
#include <ctime> 
 
boost::mutex mutex; 
boost::condition_variable_any cond; 
std::vector<std::string> lines; 
 
void fill() 
{ 
  std::ifstream is("test.dat");
 
  while (!is.eof()) {
     
    std::getline(is, lineString, lEnd);
    if (lineString.length()) {
 
      boost::unique_lock<boost::mutex> lock(mutex);
      lines.push_back(lineString); 
    }
  }
} 
 
void print() 
{ 
  std::size_t next_size = 1; 
  for (int i = 0; i < 3; ++i) 
  { 
    boost::unique_lock<boost::mutex> lock(mutex); 
    while (lines.size() != next_size) 
      cond.wait(mutex); 
    std::cout << lines.back() << std::endl; 
    ++next_size; 
    cond.notify_all(); 
  } 
} 
 
int main() 
{ 
  boost::thread t1(fill); 
  boost::thread t2(print); 
  t1.join(); 
  t2.join(); 
 
  return 0;
} 

                                              
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by: jkrPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:44:24ID: 25664751

 

by: TwentyFourSevenPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:48:00ID: 25664784

Evil,

>> By all means, try stuff out but just read up on these things first so you know who your enemy is ;)

I thought that was you, Evil.  ;-)

Seriously though, yes, I did get the impression things weren't as easy as they may first seem.

However I was hoping that by keeping my overall program simple, I might be able to escape some of the evilness.  

Some interesting links there.  Thanks.

 

by: TwentyFourSevenPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:48:40ID: 25664790

jkr:,

Thanks for your contribution.  I have not had a chance to look at your code yet,but sounds interesting.

 

by: evilrixPosted on 2009-10-26 at 10:49:25ID: 25664800

>> Some interesting links there.  Thanks.
Anytime... and I didn't mean to put you off MT development, just wanted to you be aware of the complexities... as long as you know about them they are pretty easy to avoid (well, most of the time).

 

by: Let_Me_BePosted on 2009-10-26 at 11:49:49ID: 25665411

If you are on Linux environments you can use Valgrind (modules hellgrind and DRD) to check if you program is OK.

 

by: TwentyFourSevenPosted on 2009-10-26 at 12:56:14ID: 25666091

Thanks for the tip LMB.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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