how do you use threads in making a win32 application? is it as simple as using threads in java because that''s the only thing i know about threads?

There''re two kinds of threads on Win32 platform: one is worker thread; the other is UI thread. Normally, we use a worker thread to process data and request on the back ground.

A worker thread is formed by a normal routine.
e.g.
DWORD MyThread(LPVOID param)
{
....
}

Two methods in Windows Programming are employed to create threads: _beginthread and CreateThread. The former is the C run-time library function, but the rest is Win32 API. It can be easilier implemented in VC than in Java.

David
zwdavid@hotmail.com

Threads are pretty much the same in all languages, though that''s not so on different OSs.

Does Java only run on preemptive OSs?

Actually when counting thread API:s WinNT also support posix threads which is kind of nice since that's a standard also supported by different UN*Xes (== increased portability of the code). To bad Win9x doesn't support them.

pcvsee:
The basic goes something like (using _beginthread()):

void MyThread(void *args)
{
// do thread stuff
}

void StartMyThread()
{
HANDLE hThread = (HANDLE)_beginthread(MyThread, 0, NULL);
// do some more stuff
// then wait for the thread to exit
WaitForSingleObject(hThread, INFINITE);
}

But multi-thread programming is complicated stuff, so I recommend reading a good book or so on the subject.

/Andreas

Edited by - amag on January 15, 2001 1:06:23 PM