Threads and Static Data

[Regan Heath]

Craig Black wrote:
> "Regan Heath" <regan at netmail.co.nz> wrote in message 
> news:fjjtr4$6g2$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>> Craig Black wrote:
>>>> Suite!  I think I've seen the term "thread local", but it never occured 
>>>> to me what it meant.  Goes to show you how green I am when it comes to 
>>>> threading.  I'll check it out.  Thanks.
>>> For what it's worth, some C/C++ compilers have "thread local" as a 
>>> storage class.  I've proposed adding this to D before, but there seemed 
>>> to be no interest at the time.
>> If I want thread local storage I just add the variables as static members 
>> of the class I've derived from Thread.
>>
>> Does thread local storage give us some advantage over that?
>>
>> R
> 
> Storing all your static data for everything in a thread class is not ideal 
> from a software design perspective IMO. 

Why not?

The way I see it members of a thread class are essentially the same 
thing as global variables in a program.

The program is just the first thread, and it's member variables are 
global variables.

The difference is that any thread you create has public access to the 
program/main threads member/global variables, which is actually worse in 
terms of encapsulation than using thread classes and member variables.

So, I reckon if you want "a variable which is private to a thread" why 
not just make it a member of your thread class.

Regan