Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, Second Edition

8.1. Basic Thread Concepts

This chapter starts by reviewing what threads are and how you can control them.

8.1.1. Threads

A thread is the fundamental unit of execution within an application: A running application consists of at least one thread. Each thread has its own stack and runs independently from the application's other threads. Threads share the resources used by the application as it runs, such as file handles or memory, which is why problems can occur. Data corruption is a common side effect of having two threads simultaneously write data to the same block of memory, for example.

Threads can be implemented in different ways. On most systems, threads are created and managed by the operating system. Sometimes, however, the threads are actually implemented by a software layer above the operating system, such as the runtime system for an interpreted programming language. Conceptually, however, they behave the same, and the remainder of this chapter assumes that the operating system manages the threads. (Such threads are often called native or kernel-level threads.)

Because the number of threads that can be executed at any given instant is limited by the number of processors in the computer, the operating system will rapidly switch from thread to thread, giving each thread a small window of time in which to run. This is known as preemptive threading, because the operating system can suspend a thread's execution at any point in order to let another thread run. (A cooperative ...