Cancel a Thread

Cancellation allows a thread to request the termination of any other thread in the process. Cancellation is an option when all further operations of a related set of threads are undesirable or unnecessary.

One example of thread cancellation is an asynchronously generated cancel condition, such as, when a user requesting to close or exit a running application. Another example is the completion of a task undertaken by a number of threads. One of the threads might ultimately complete the task while the others continue to operate. Since the running threads serve no purpose at that point, these threads should be cancelled.

Cancellation Points

Be careful to cancel a thread only when cancellation is safe. The pthreads standard specifies several cancellation points, including:

• Programmatically, establish a thread cancellation point through a pthread_testcancel call.

• Threads waiting for the occurrence of a particular condition in pthread_cond_wait or pthread_cond_timedwait(3C).

• Threads blocked on sigwait(2).

• Some standard library calls. In general, these calls include functions in which threads can block. See the cancellation(5) man page for a list.

Cancellation is enabled by default. At times, you might want an application to disable cancellation. Disabled cancellation has the result of deferring all cancellation requests until cancellation requests are enabled again.

See pthread_setcancelstate Syntax for information about disabling cancellation.

Placing Cancellation Points

Dangers exist in performing cancellations. Most deal with properly restoring invariants and freeing shared resources. A thread that is cancelled without care might leave a mutex in a locked state, leading to a deadlock. Or a cancelled thread might leave a region of allocated memory with no way to identify the memory and therefore unable to free the memory.

The standard C library specifies a cancellation interface that permits or forbids cancellation programmatically. The library defines cancellation points that are the set of points at which cancellation can occur. The library also allows the scope of cancellation handlers to be defined so that the handlers are sure to operate when and where intended. The cancellation handlers provide clean up services to restore resources and state to a condition that is consistent with the point of origin.

Placement of cancellation points and the effects of cancellation handlers must be based on an understanding of the application. A mutex is explicitly not a cancellation point and should be held only for the minimal essential time.

Limit regions of asynchronous cancellation to sequences with no external dependencies that could result in dangling resources or unresolved state conditions. Take care to restore cancellation state when returning from some alternate, nested cancellation state. The interface provides features to facilitate restoration: pthread_setcancelstate(3C) preserves the current cancel state in a referenced variable, pthread_setcanceltype(3C) preserves the current cancel type in the same way.

Cancellations can occur under three different circumstances:

• Asynchronously

• At various points in the execution sequence as defined by the standard

• At a call to pthread_testcancel()

By default, cancellation can occur only at well-defined points as defined by the POSIX standard.

In all cases, take care that resources and state are restored to a condition consistent with the point of origin.