[Go to CFHT Home Page] Man Pages
Back to Software Index  BORDER=0Manpage Top Level
    thr_min_stack(3T) manual page Table of Contents

Name

thr_min_stack - returns the minimum-allowable size for a thread’s stack

Synopsis

cc [ flag ... ] file ... -lthread [ library ... ]

#include <thread.h>

size_t thr_min_stack(void);

MT-Level

MT-Safe

Description

When a thread is created with a user-supplied stack, the user must reserve enough space to run this thread. In a dynamically linked execution environment, it is very hard to know what the minimum stack requirments are for a thread. The function thr_min_stack() returns the amount of space needed to execute a null thread. This is a thread that was created to execute a null procedure. A thread that does something useful should have a stack size that is thr_min_stack() + <some increment>.

Most users should not be creating threads with user-supplied stacks. This functionality was provided to support applications that wanted complete control over their execution environment.

Typically, users should let the threads library manage stack allocation. The threads library provides default stacks which should meet the requirements of any created thread.

thr_min_stack() will return the unsigned int THR_MIN_STACK, which is the minimum-allowable size for a thread’s stack.

In this implementation the default size for a user-thread’s stack is one mega-byte. If the second argument to thr_create(3T) is NULL, then the default stack size for the newly-created thread will be used. Otherwise, you may specify a stack-size that is at least THR_MIN_STACK, yet less than the size of your machine’s virtual memory.

It is recommended that the default stack size be used.

To determine the smallest-allowable size for a thread’s stack, execute the following: 


/* cc thisfile.c -lthread */
#define _REENTRANT
#include <thread.h>
#include <stdio.h>
main()  {
        printf("thr_min_stack() returns %u\n",thr_min_stack());
}

See Also

pthread_attr_init(3T) , pthread_create(3T)

Notes

Although the POSIX threads implementation, pthreads, does not have a corresponding function to thr_min_stack(), it does implement a minimum stack size, whose value is PTHREAD_STACK_MIN, which may be ascertained as follows: 


/* cc thisfile.c -lpthread */
#define _REENTRANT
#include <pthread.h>
#include <stdio.h>
main()  {
        printf("minimum POSIX stack size is  %u\n", PTHREAD_STACK_MIN);
}

Table of Contents