Terminates the calling thread.
Threads Library (libpthreads.a)
#include <pthread.h>
void pthread_exit (status)
void *status;The pthread_exit subroutine terminates the calling thread safely, and stores a termination status for any thread that may join the calling thread. The termination status is always a void pointer; it can reference any kind of data. It is not recommended to cast this pointer into a scalar data type (int for example), because the casts may not be portable. This subroutine never returns.
Unlike the exit subroutine, the pthread_exit subroutine does not close files. Thus any file opened and used only by the calling thread must be closed before calling this subroutine. It is also important to note that the pthread_exit subroutine frees any thread-specific data, including the thread's stack. Any data allocated on the stack becomes invalid, since the stack is freed and the corresponding memory may be reused by another thread. Therefore, thread synchronization objects (mutexes and condition variables) allocated on a thread's stack must be destroyed before the thread calls the pthread_exit subroutine.
Returning from the initial routine of a thread implicitly calls the pthread_exit subroutine, using the return value as parameter.
If the thread is not detached, its resources, including the thread ID, the termination status, the thread-specific data, and its storage, are all maintained until the thread is detached or the process terminates.
If another thread joins the calling thread, that thread wakes up immediately, and the calling thread is automatically detached.
If the thread is detached, the cleanup routines are popped from their stack and executed. Then the destructor routines from the thread-specific data are executed. Finally, the storage of the thread is reclaimed and its ID is freed for reuse.
Terminating the initial thread by calling this subroutine does not terminate the process, it just terminates the initial thread. However, if all the threads in the process are terminated, the process is terminated by implicitly calling the exit subroutine with a return code of 0 if the last thread is detached, or 1 otherwise.
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| status | Points to an optional termination status, used by joining threads. If no termination status is desired, its value should be NULL. |
The pthread_exit function cannot return to its caller.
No errors are defined.
The pthread_exit function will not return an error code of EINTR.