Question

What is thread? How to create thread in win32 application?

Answer 1

Thread is a light weight process. A thread can be loosely defined as a separate stream of execution that takes place simultaneously with and independently of everything else that might be happening. A thread is like a classic program that starts at point A and executes until it reaches point B. It does not have an event loop. A thread runs independently of anything else happening in the computer. Without threads an entire program can be held up by one CPU intensive task or one infinite loop, intentional or otherwise. With threads the other tasks that don’t get stuck in the loop can continue processing without waiting for the stuck task to finish.
Please go through this link for more detail and its comparision with process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computer_science)

Creating thread is very easy for an example go through this….

This is a very example which creates thread i.e ThreadFun1

#include<windows.h>
#include<stdio.h>
#include<conio.h>

void __stdcall ThreadFun1()
{
    printf("Hi This is my first thread.\n");
}
void main()
{
    printf("Entered In Main\n");
    HANDLE hThread;
    DWORD threadID;
    hThread = CreateThread(NULL, // security attributes ( default if NULL )
                            0, // stack SIZE default if 0
                            ThreadFun1, // Start Address
                            NULL, // input data
                            0, // creational flag ( start if  0 )
                            &threadID); // thread ID
    printf("Other business in Main\n"); 
    printf("Main is exiting\n");
    CloseHandle(hThread);
    getch();
}