Terminating multiple processes

[Russel Winder]

On Wed, 2018-01-31 at 22:15 +0000, Arek via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> 
[…]
> Assuming your're talking about threads: there's no secure method 
> of forcing the thread to stop. Threads share the state (eg. can 
> hold the locks) and killing them is always risky.

I am indeed talking threads not OS processes. I just like working with
(processes|tasks) submitted to a thread pool, but this can lead to
jargon use problems.

> If your threads are blocked reading the socket, you probably can 
> close these sockets and exit after the read error.

The problem is actually a thread blocked in an inotify blocking read.
As both Steven and yourself have pointed out I am going to have to use
a timeout to check the state of the application. 

> Another way is to use atomic flag indicating that thread needs to 
> be interrupted.
> After any blocking operation, the thread have to check this flag 
> and finish the job.
> It's good to use timeouts (eg socket timeout) in such scenario 
> (if possible).

I guess there is a choice here between shared memory to set the
termination flag, or using an input channel and sending the termination
message. I think the latter may be preferable, and certainly more
consistent with how the other threads terminate.

Thanks to you and Steven for confirming what I had been fearing, but
wondered if there was an easier (albeit less theoretically sound) one.
 
-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk
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