CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++multithreadingstdthread
Engineer999
Engineer999

Reputation: 3945

Multiple threads inside class accessing data

I've read that different threads share the same memory segments apart from the stack. There is something i've been trying to understand. I have a class which creates different threads. Below is a simple example of what I am doing, creating one thread in the constructor.

When an object of this class is created, in main() for example, all the threads can access the same member variables. If every thread gets its own stack, why doesn't each thread get a copy of the member variables rather than access to the same variable. I have looked around and I'm trying to get a picture in my mind of what is going on in memory here with the different stack frames. Many thanks in advance for any replies. 

////////////////////////    
MyClass::MyClass()
{
    t1 = std::thread([this] { this->threadFunc(); });
    t1.detach();

}

/////////////////////////

void MyClass::threadFunc()
{
    ///do stuff.. update member variables etc.
}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4938

Answers (3)

Mohamad Elghawi
Mohamad Elghawi

Reputation: 2124

I've read that different threads share the same memory segments apart from the stack.

This is not entirely accurate. Threads share the same address space as opposed to being sand-boxed like processes are.

The stack is just some memory in your application that has been specifically reserved and is used to hold things such as function parameters, local variables, and other function-related information.

Every thread has it's own stack. This means that when a particular thread is executing, it will use it's own specific stack to avoid trampling over other threads which might be idle or executing simultaneously in a multi-core system.

Remember that these stacks are all still inside the same address space which means that any thread can access the contents of another threads' stack.

A simple example:

#include <iostream>
#include <thread>

void Foo(int& i)
{
    // if thread t is executing this function then j will sit inside thread t's stack
    // if we call this function from the main thread then j will sit inside the main stack
    int j = 456;

    i++; // we can see i because threads share the same address space
}

int main()
{
    int i = 123; // this will sit inside the main threads' stack

    std::thread t(std::bind(&Foo, std::ref(i))); // we pass the address of i to our thread
    t.join();

    std::cout << i << '\n';
    return 0;
}

An illustration:

enter image description here>

As you can see, each thread has its own stack (which is just some part of the processes' memory) which lives inside the same address space.

Upvotes: 3

alex
alex

Reputation: 2482

If you have

MyClass c1;
MyClass c2;

then there will be two instances of MyClass, c1 and c2, each with its own members. The thread started during construction of c1 will have access to c1's members only and the thread started in c2 will have access to c2's members only.

If you are talking about several threads within one class (not obvious from your code), then each thread has a copy of this which is just a pointer to your MyClass object. New (local) variables will be allocated on the thread's stack and will be visible only for the thread which creates them.

Upvotes: 0

Claudiu
Claudiu

Reputation: 229281

I've read that different threads share the same memory segments apart from the stack. [...] If every thread gets its own stack, why doesn't each thread get a copy of the member variables rather than access to the same variable.

Hmm... the short answer is, that's the purpose for which threads were designed: multiple threads of execution, all accessing the same data. Then you have threading primitives - like mutexes - to make sure that they don't step on each others' toes, so to speak - that you don't have concurrent writes, for example.

Thus in the default case, threads share objects, and you have to do extra work to synchronize accesses. If you want threads to each have copies of objects... then you can instead write the code to give each thread a copy of the object, instead of the same object. Or, you may consider using processes (e.g. via fork()) instead of threads.

Upvotes: 0

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