[c++-pthreads] Re: [PATCH] thread cancellation via C++ exception

[Dave Butenhof]

Alexander Terekhov wrote:

>http://www.redhat.com/archives/phil-list/2004-May/msg00016.html
>
><quote>
>
>Cancellation, as the word already suggests, is final.  There mustn't 
>be any catch without rethrow.  The thread library does, and will 
>probably even more so in future, alter the state of the library once 
>a thread is canceled and this is not reversible.
>
></quote>
>
>This is utter crap. The only "state" affected by thread cancel 
>request delivery is the cancellation state and mode. They must be 
>set to PTHREAD_CANCEL_DISABLE and PTHREAD_CANCEL_DEFERRED 
>respectively. There's no rational reason whatsoever for thread 
>cancel (and even exit) exceptions [std::thread_cancel_request and 
>std::thread_exit_request; both "is a" 
>std::thread_termination_request) to NOT be finalizable by some
>user's catch()-without-rethrow.
>  
>
This is a philosophical issue, not technical.

Yes, Alexander, there's no reason a cancel exception cannot be 
finalized, once it's been made an exception. In fact, once you've made 
it a standard system exception, you'll need to add special case code 
(probably in several places) to prevent it from being finalized using 
normal exception mechanisms like 'catch(...)'. On the other hand, it 
should be a fairly strong policy that only in rare cases SHOULD you 
finalize a cancel. You'd need to KNOW, absolutely, that this particular 
cancellation intended to cancel a "subsystem" rather than "the thread".

On the other hand, "POSIX cancel" cannot be finalized -- POSIX provides 
no mechanism. POSIX does not require that it be an exception (though it 
is suggested and implied as strongly as we possibly could without adding 
exceptions to the C language), even for a platform that already has 
exceptions. (Though it's foolish to implement cancellation using 
anything other than true exceptions, and even more so if you've already 
got real exceptions; but that of course remains a personal opinion. ;-) )

So it's not so much "utter crap" as merely a bizarre opinion with which 
you (and I) happen to disagree. ;-)

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