D2 std.thread and ThreadAddr

[fawcett at uwindsor.ca]

On 10-04-29 07:40 PM, Sean Kelly wrote:
> fawcett at uwindsor.ca Wrote:
>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I'm crossposting this question from digitalmars.D.learn. Looking at
>> D2's documentation on the std.thread module,
>>
>> http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/phobos/std_thread.html
>>
>> ...there are several functions take a ThreadAddr value as an argument.
>> But there are no documented functions, methods or properties one can use
>> to obtain a ThreadAddr value.
>>
>> I assume this is a documentation error. How do you get a ThreadAddr?
>
> I've always tried to keep the thread module completely platform
> agnostic so I'm not sure if these routines really should be public
> at all, but that aside, a ThreadAddr is a platform-dependent type.
> It's a pthread_t on Posix and a uint on Windows.

Thanks! If they do remain public, I'd vote to add a formal
currentThread() function, and a 'ThreadAddr getID()' accessor to the
library.

> You'd get the address using pthread_self() on Posix and whatever the
> equivalent is on Windows.

I believe it's GetCurrentThreadId() on Windows.

As a side-question: it considered bad form for a D library to have
platform-specific functionality? E.g., if for some reason Windows
didn't have any function for getting the current thread-id, is there a
convention that the D library shouldn't offer a "currentID()" function
at all, for portability reasons?

(My personal bias would be to offer it on whatever platforms supported
the feature, and document its absence elsewhere; or offer a
dummy-version on non-supporting platforms that caused a compilation
error when user code attempted to call it.)

Cheers,
Graham