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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T23:35:53+00:00

I have a C++ application that isn’t calling pthread_join and has O(time running) threads.

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I have a C++ application that isn’t calling pthread_join and has O(time running) threads. My question is – how would this affect the health of the server task? Is there a fixed number of threads a C++ task can hold before it crashes or fails to start new threads? Will this manifest as an error code in pthread_create? Does it just leak memory or will it slow down processing time of the rest of the applications?

The threads are finishing (top level function is returning), just not being pthread_join‘ed.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The POSIX manual says pthread_create can return EAGAIN:

    The system lacked the necessary resources to create another thread, or
    the system-imposed limit on the total number of threads in a process
    {PTHREAD_THREADS_MAX} would be exceeded    .

    A simple fix would be to mark the threads detached using pthread_detach or using an attribute and pthread_attr_setdetachstate. Then when they die they’re just collected.

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