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perlthrtut - Tutorial on threads in Perl
This tutorial describes the use of Perl interpreter threads (sometimes
referred to as ithreads) that was first introduced in Perl 5.6.0. In this
model, each thread runs in its own Perl interpreter, and any data sharing
between threads must be explicit. The user-level interface for ithreads
uses the the threads manpage class.
NOTE: There is another older Perl threading flavor called the 5.005 model
that used the Threads class. This old model is known to have problems, is
deprecated, and support for it will be removed in release 5.10. You are
strongly encouraged to migrate any existing 5.005 threads code to the new
model as soon as possible.
You can see which (or neither) threading flavour you have by
running perl -V and looking at the Platform section.
If you have useithreads=define you have ithreads, if you
have use5005threads=define you have 5.005 threads.
If you have neither, you don't have any thread support built in.
If you have both, you are in trouble.
The the threads manpage and the threads::shared manpage modules are included in the core Perl
distribution. Additionally, they are maintained as a separate modules on
CPAN, so you can check there for any updates.
A thread is a flow of control through a program with a single
execution point.
Sounds an awful lot like a process, doesn't it? Well, it should.
Threads are one of the pieces of a process. Every process has at least
one thread and, up until now, every process running Perl had only one
thread. With 5.8, though, you can create extra threads. We're going
to show you how, when, and why.
There are three basic ways that you can structure a threaded
program. Which model you choose depends on what you need your program
to do. For many non-trivial threaded programs, you'll need to choose
different models for different pieces of your program.
The boss/worker model usually has one boss thread and one or more
worker threads. The boss thread gathers or generates tasks that need
to be done, then parcels those tasks out to the appropriate worker
thread.
This model is common in GUI and server programs, where a main thread
waits for some event and then passes that event to the appropriate
worker threads for processing. Once the event has been passed on, the
boss thread goes back to waiting for another event.
The boss thread does relatively little work. While tasks aren't
necessarily performed faster than with any other method, it tends to
have the best user-response times.
In the work crew model, several threads are created that do
essentially the same thing to different pieces of data. It closely
mirrors classical parallel processing and vector processors, where a
large array of processors do the exact same thing to many pieces of
data.
This model is particularly useful if the system running the program
will distribute multiple threads across different processors. It can
also be useful in ray tracing or rendering engines, where the
individual threads can pass on interim results to give the user visual
feedback.
The pipeline model divides up a task into a series of steps, and
passes the results of one step on to the thread processing the
next. Each thread does one thing to each piece of data and passes the
results to the next thread in line.
This model makes the most sense if you have multiple processors so two
or more threads will be executing in parallel, though it can often
make sense in other contexts as well. It tends to keep the individual
tasks small and simple, as well as allowing some parts of the pipeline
to block (on I/O or system calls, for example) while other parts keep
going. If you're running different parts of the pipeline on different
processors you may also take advantage of the caches on each
processor.
This model is also handy for a form of recursive programming where,
rather than having a subroutine call itself, it instead creates
another thread. Prime and Fibonacci generators both map well to this
form of the pipeline model. (A version of a prime number generator is
presented later on.)
If you have experience with other thread implementations, you might
find that things aren't quite what you expect. It's very important to
remember when dealing with Perl threads that Perl Threads Are Not X
Threads for all values of X. They aren't POSIX threads, or
DecThreads, or Java's Green threads, or Win32 threads. There are
similarities, and the broad concepts are the same, but if you start
looking for implementation details you're going to be either
disappointed or confused. Possibly both.
This is not to say that Perl threads are completely different from
everything that's ever come before -- they're not. Perl's threading
model owes a lot to other thread models, especially POSIX. Just as
Perl is not C, though, Perl threads are not POSIX threads. So if you
find yourself looking for mutexes, or thread priorities, it's time to
step back a bit and think about what you want to do and how Perl can
do it.
However, it is important to remember that Perl threads cannot magically
do things unless your operating system's threads allow it. So if your
system blocks the entire process on sleep(), Perl usually will, as well.
Perl Threads Are Different.
The addition of threads has changed Perl's internals
substantially. There are implications for people who write
modules with XS code or external libraries. However, since Perl data is
not shared among threads by default, Perl modules stand a high chance of
being thread-safe or can be made thread-safe easily. Modules that are not
tagged as thread-safe should be tested or code reviewed before being used
in production code.
Not all modules that you might use are thread-safe, and you should
always assume a module is unsafe unless the documentation says
otherwise. This includes modules that are distributed as part of the
core. Threads are a relatively new feature, and even some of the standard
modules aren't thread-safe.
Even if a module is thread-safe, it doesn't mean that the module is optimized
to work well with threads. A module could possibly be rewritten to utilize
the new features in threaded Perl to increase performance in a threaded
environment.
If you're using a module that's not thread-safe for some reason, you
can protect yourself by using it from one, and only one thread at all.
If you need multiple threads to access such a module, you can use semaphores and
lots of programming discipline to control access to it. Semaphores
are covered in Basic semaphores.
See also Thread-Safety of System Libraries.
The the threads manpage module provides the basic functions you need to write
threaded programs. In the following sections, we'll cover the basics,
showing you what you need to do to create a threaded program. After
that, we'll go over some of the features of the the threads manpage module that
make threaded programming easier.
Thread support is a Perl compile-time option -- it's something that's
turned on or off when Perl is built at your site, rather than when
your programs are compiled. If your Perl wasn't compiled with thread
support enabled, then any attempt to use threads will fail.
Your programs can use the Config module to check whether threads are
enabled. If your program can't run without them, you can say something
like:
use Config;
$Config{useithreads} or die('Recompile Perl with threads to run this program.');
A possibly-threaded program using a possibly-threaded module might
have code like this:
use Config;
use MyMod;
BEGIN {
if ($Config{useithreads}) {
require MyMod_threaded;
import MyMod_threaded;
} else {
require MyMod_unthreaded;
import MyMod_unthreaded;
}
}
Since code that runs both with and without threads is usually pretty
messy, it's best to isolate the thread-specific code in its own
module. In our example above, that's what MyMod_threaded is, and it's
only imported if we're running on a threaded Perl.
In a real situation, care should be taken that all threads are finished
executing before the program exits. That care has not been taken in these
examples in the interest of simplicity. Running these examples as is will
produce error messages, usually caused by the fact that there are still
threads running when the program exits. You should not be alarmed by this.
The the threads manpage module provides the tools you need to create new
threads. Like any other module, you need to tell Perl that you want to use
it; use threads; imports all the pieces you need to create basic
threads.
The simplest, most straightforward way to create a thread is with create():
use threads;
my $thr = threads->create(\&sub1);
sub sub1 {
print("In the thread\n");
}
The create() method takes a reference to a subroutine and creates a new
thread that starts executing in the referenced subroutine. Control
then passes both to the subroutine and the caller.
If you need to, your program can pass parameters to the subroutine as
part of the thread startup. Just include the list of parameters as
part of the threads->create() call, like this:
use threads;
my $Param3 = 'foo';
my $thr1 = threads->create(\&sub1, 'Param 1', 'Param 2', $Param3);
my @ParamList = (42, 'Hello', 3.14);
my $thr2 = threads->create(\&sub1, @ParamList);
my $thr3 = threads->create(\&sub1, qw(Param1 Param2 Param3));
sub sub1 {
my @InboundParameters = @_;
print("In the thread\n");
print('Got parameters >', join('<>', @InboundParameters), "<\n");
}
The last example illustrates another feature of threads. You can spawn
off several threads using the same subroutine. Each thread executes
the same subroutine, but in a separate thread with a separate
environment and potentially separate arguments.
new() is a synonym for create().
Since threads are also subroutines, they can return values. To wait
for a thread to exit and extract any values it might return, you can
use the join() method:
use threads;
my ($thr) = threads->create(\&sub1);
my @ReturnData = $thr->join();
print('Thread returned ', join(', ', @ReturnData), "\n");
sub sub1 { return ('Fifty-six', 'foo', 2); }
In the example above, the join() method returns as soon as the thread
ends. In addition to waiting for a thread to finish and gathering up
any values that the thread might have returned, join() also performs
any OS cleanup necessary for the thread. That cleanup might be
important, especially for long-running programs that spawn lots of
threads. If you don't want the return values and don't want to wait
for the thread to finish, you should call the detach() method
instead, as described next.
NOTE: In the example above, the thread returns a list, thus necessitating
that the thread creation call be made in list context (i.e., my ($thr)).
See $thr- in the threads manpagejoin()"> and THREAD CONTEXT in the threads manpage for more
details on thread context and return values.
join() does three things: it waits for a thread to exit, cleans up
after it, and returns any data the thread may have produced. But what
if you're not interested in the thread's return values, and you don't
really care when the thread finishes? All you want is for the thread
to get cleaned up after when it's done.
In this case, you use the detach() method. Once a thread is detached,
it'll run until it's finished; then Perl will clean up after it
automatically.
use threads;
my $thr = threads->create(\&sub1);
$thr->detach();
sleep(15);
sub sub1 {
$a = 0;
while (1) {
$a++;
print("\$a is $a\n");
sleep(1);
}
}
Once a thread is detached, it may not be joined, and any return data
that it might have produced (if it was done and waiting for a join) is
lost.
detach() can also be called as a class method to allow a thread to
detach itself:
use threads;
my $thr = threads->create(\&sub1);
sub sub1 {
threads->detach();
}
Now that we've covered the basics of threads, it's time for our next
topic: Data. Threading introduces a couple of complications to data
access that non-threaded programs never need to worry about.
The biggest difference between Perl ithreads and the old 5.005 style
threading, or for that matter, to most other threading systems out there,
is that by default, no data is shared. When a new Perl thread is created,
all the data associated with the current thread is copied to the new
thread, and is subsequently private to that new thread!
This is similar in feel to what happens when a UNIX process forks,
except that in this case, the data is just copied to a different part of
memory within the same process rather than a real fork taking place.
To make use of threading, however, one usually wants the threads to share
at least some data between themselves. This is done with the
the threads::shared manpage module and the :shared attribute:
use threads;
use threads::shared;
my $foo :shared = 1;
my $bar = 1;
threads->create(sub { $foo++; $bar++; })->join();
print("$foo\n");
print("$bar\n");
In the case of a shared array, all the array's elements are shared, and for
a shared hash, all the keys and values are shared. This places
restrictions on what may be assigned to shared array and hash elements: only
simple values or references to shared variables are allowed - this is
so that a private variable can't accidentally become shared. A bad
assignment will cause the thread to die. For example:
use threads;
use threads::shared;
my $var = 1;
my $svar :shared = 2;
my %hash :shared;
... create some threads ...
$hash{a} = 1;
$hash{a} = $var;
$hash{a} = $svar;
$hash{a} = \$svar;
$hash{a} = \$var;
delete($hash{a});
Note that a shared variable guarantees that if two or more threads try to
modify it at the same time, the internal state of the variable will not
become corrupted. However, there are no guarantees beyond this, as
explained in the next section.
While threads bring a new set of useful tools, they also bring a
number of pitfalls. One pitfall is the race condition:
use threads;
use threads::shared;
my $a :shared = 1;
my $thr1 = threads->create(\&sub1);
my $thr2 = threads->create(\&sub2);
$thr1->join;
$thr2->join;
print("$a\n");
sub sub1 { my $foo = $a; $a = $foo + 1; }
sub sub2 { my $bar = $a; $a = $bar + 1; }
What do you think $a will be? The answer, unfortunately, is it
depends. Both sub1() and sub2() access the global variable $a, once
to read and once to write. Depending on factors ranging from your
thread implementation's scheduling algorithm to the phase of the moon,
$a can be 2 or 3.
Race conditions are caused by unsynchronized access to shared
data. Without explicit synchronization, there's no way to be sure that
nothing has happened to the shared data between the time you access it
and the time you update it. Even this simple code fragment has the
possibility of error:
use threads;
my $a :shared = 2;
my $b :shared;
my $c :shared;
my $thr1 = threads->create(sub { $b = $a; $a = $b + 1; });
my $thr2 = threads->create(sub { $c = $a; $a = $c + 1; });
$thr1->join;
$thr2->join;
Two threads both access $a. Each thread can potentially be interrupted
at any point, or be executed in any order. At the end, $a could be 3
or 4, and both $b and $c could be 2 or 3.
Even $a += 5 or $a++ are not guaranteed to be atomic.
Whenever your program accesses data or resources that can be accessed
by other threads, you must take steps to coordinate access or risk
data inconsistency and race conditions. Note that Perl will protect its
internals from your race conditions, but it won't protect you from you.
Perl provides a number of mechanisms to coordinate the interactions
between themselves and their data, to avoid race conditions and the like.
Some of these are designed to resemble the common techniques used in thread
libraries such as pthreads; others are Perl-specific. Often, the
standard techniques are clumsy and difficult to get right (such as
condition waits). Where possible, it is usually easier to use Perlish
techniques such as queues, which remove some of the hard work involved.
The lock() function takes a shared variable and puts a lock on it.
No other thread may lock the variable until the variable is unlocked
by the thread holding the lock. Unlocking happens automatically
when the locking thread exits the block that contains the call to the
lock() function. Using lock() is straightforward: This example has
several threads doing some calculations in parallel, and occasionally
updating a running total:
use threads;
use threads::shared;
my $total :shared = 0;
sub calc {
while (1) {
my $result;
{
lock($total);
$total += $result;
}
last if $result == 0;
}
}
my $thr1 = threads->create(\&calc);
my $thr2 = threads->create(\& | 
