pthread_setcancelstate, pthread_setcanceltype - set cancelability state and type
POSIX threads library (libpthread, -lpthread)
#include <pthread.h>
int pthread_setcancelstate(int state, int *oldstate);
int pthread_setcanceltype(int type, int *oldtype);The pthread_setcancelstate() sets the cancelability
state of the calling thread to the value given in state. The
previous cancelability state of the thread is returned in the buffer
pointed to by oldstate. The state argument must have
one of the following values:
The thread is cancelable. This is the default cancelability state in all new threads, including the initial thread. The thread's cancelability type determines when a cancelable thread will respond to a cancelation request.
The thread is not cancelable. If a cancelation request is received, it is blocked until cancelability is enabled.
The pthread_setcanceltype() sets the cancelability
type of the calling thread to the value given in type. The
previous cancelability type of the thread is returned in the buffer
pointed to by oldtype. The type argument must have one
of the following values:
A cancelation request is deferred until the thread next calls a function that is a cancelation point (see pthreads(7)). This is the default cancelability type in all new threads, including the initial thread.
Even with deferred cancelation, a cancelation point in an asynchronous signal handler may still be acted upon and the effect is as if it was an asynchronous cancelation.
The thread can be canceled at any time. (Typically, it will be canceled immediately upon receiving a cancelation request, but the system doesn't guarantee this.)
The set-and-get operation performed by each of these functions is atomic with respect to other threads in the process calling the same function.
On success, these functions return 0; on error, they return a nonzero error number.
See pthread_cancel(3).
The pthread_setcancelstate() can fail with the following error:
Invalid value for state.
The pthread_setcanceltype() can fail with the following error:
Invalid value for type.
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
| Interface | Attribute | Value |
| Thread safety | MT-Safe |
|
| Async-cancel safety | AC-Safe |
POSIX.1-2008.
glibc 2.0 POSIX.1-2001.
For details of what happens when a thread is canceled, see pthread_cancel(3).
Briefly disabling cancelability is useful if a thread performs some critical action that must not be interrupted by a cancelation request. Beware of disabling cancelability for long periods, or around operations that may block for long periods, since that will render the thread unresponsive to cancelation requests.
Setting the cancelability type to
PTHREAD_CANCEL_ASYNCHRONOUS is rarely useful. Since the
thread could be canceled at any time, it cannot safely reserve
resources (e.g., allocating memory with malloc(3)),
acquire mutexes, semaphores, or locks, and so on. Reserving resources is
unsafe because the application has no way of knowing what the state of
these resources is when the thread is canceled; that is, did cancelation
occur before the resources were reserved, while they were reserved, or
after they were released? Furthermore, some internal data structures
(e.g., the linked list of free blocks managed by the
malloc(3) family of functions) may be left in an
inconsistent state if cancelation occurs in the middle of the function
call. Consequently, clean-up handlers cease to be useful.
Functions that can be safely asynchronously canceled are called
async-cancel-safe functions. POSIX.1-2001 and POSIX.1-2008
require only that pthread_cancel(3),
pthread_setcancelstate(), and
pthread_setcanceltype() be async-cancel-safe. In
general, other library functions can't be safely called from an
asynchronously cancelable thread.
One of the few circumstances in which asynchronous cancelability is useful is for cancelation of a thread that is in a pure compute-bound loop.
The Linux threading implementations permit the oldstate
argument of pthread_setcancelstate() to be NULL, in
which case the information about the previous cancelability state is not
returned to the caller. Many other implementations also permit a NULL
oldstat argument, but POSIX.1 does not specify this point, so
portable applications should always specify a non-NULL value in
oldstate. A precisely analogous set of statements applies for
the oldtype argument of
pthread_setcanceltype().
pthread_cancel(3), pthread_cleanup_push(3), pthread_testcancel(3), pthreads(7)