Question

I’ve wrote a ThreadPool implementation in C# and now I would like to port it into standard C++ (with boost if possible). The original C# version can call functions with multiple arguments using delegates, and the code is something like:

    public static void RunOrBlock(Function function)
    {
        WorkItem workItem = new WorkItemNoArguments(function);
        RunOrBlock(workItem);
    }

    public static void RunOrBlock<T1>(Function<T1> function, T1 t1)
    {
        WorkItem workItem = new WorkItem<T1>(function, t1);
        RunOrBlock(workItem);
    }

Here a “Function” is defined using delegate:

public delegate void Function();
public delegate void Function<in T1>(T1 t1);

And WorkItem can be defined similarly:

public abstract class WorkItem
{
    protected int threadIndex;

    public int ThreadIndex
    {
        get { return threadIndex; }
        set { threadIndex = value; }
    }

    public abstract void Run();
}

public class WorkItem<T1> : WorkItem
{
    private readonly Function<T1> _function;
    private readonly T1 _t1;

    public WorkItem(Function<T1> function, T1 t1)
    {
        _function = function;
        _t1 = t1;
    }

    public override void Run()
    {
        _function(_t1);
    }
}

I’ve read some materials for pThread and have known that it is possible to declare these arguments in a struct and then cast it into (void *). However, since most of my functions have already been implemented it would be extremely inconvenient using this way.

My question is: since C++ does not have delegate support, what is a handy and convenient way to implement a thread pool which supports calling functions with multiple arguments?

Answer 1

You could use boost’s bind to generate nullary functions. It would be somewhat verbose, but instead of calling RunOrBlock(f, a1, a2, ...) you could do RunOrBlock(bind(f, a1, a2, ...)).