Delivery-Date: Mon Oct 27 10:56:31 2008
Message-Id: <200810271807.m9RI7Qlv011792@bourbon.usc.edu>
To: cs551@merlot.usc.edu
Subject: Re: Ok to call "normal" methods from "threaded" methods?
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:07:26 -0700
From: Bill Cheng <william@bourbon.usc.edu>

Someone wrote:

  > Within the same file I have 'threaded' methods (for client, server, etc.) as
  > well as 'normal' methods (that are called normally, and not as individual
  > threads). The 'normal' methods are used simply to read/write from sockets
  > (id's passed as parameters) and do not access any shared variables. Could
  > calling these 'normal' methods from the 'threaded' methods possibly cause
  > any side effects?

If your "normal" methods are "thread-safe", then they should
not cause problems.  Of course, supposed thread-safe methods 
or functions may not be actually thread-safe because there
are bugs!

Please remember that C and C++ are basically the same thing.
Also, C functions and C++ methods are basically the same thing.
The difference is that the corresponding C++ object is passed
to C++ method as the first argument automatically and hidden
from you.  So, thread-safety applies the same way to C++ methods
as they do to C functions.

  > I am seeing strange behavior from my threads around the times they call the
  > 'normal' methods (for example, seeming to block when they shouldn't be,
  > which causes my thread loops to simply not loop). Do you think it would be
  > better to include the code from the 'normal' methods directly into
  > 'threaded' methods, rather than separating them out?

I don't think it would make any difference if there are bugs
in these methods!
--
Bill Cheng // bill.cheng@usc.edu <URL:http://merlot.usc.edu/william/usc/>