Multithreaded Programming Guide

Cancellation

Thread cancellation allows a thread to terminate the execution of any other thread in the process. The target thread (the one being cancelled) can keep cancellation requests pending and can perform application-specific cleanup when it acts upon the cancellation notice.

The pthreads cancellation feature permits either asynchronous or deferred termination of a thread. Asynchronous cancellation can occur at any time; deferred cancellation can occur only at defined points. Deferred cancellation is the default type.