path: root/man3/pthread_setcancelstate.3

'\" t
.\" Copyright (c) 2008 Linux Foundation, written by Michael Kerrisk
.\"     <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
.\"
.\" SPDX-License-Identifier: Linux-man-pages-copyleft
.\"
.TH pthread_setcancelstate 3 2023-10-31 "Linux man-pages 6.7"
.SH NAME
pthread_setcancelstate, pthread_setcanceltype \-
set cancelability state and type
.SH LIBRARY
POSIX threads library
.RI ( libpthread ", " \-lpthread )
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B #include <pthread.h>
.P
.BI "int pthread_setcancelstate(int " state ", int *" oldstate );
.BI "int pthread_setcanceltype(int " type ", int *" oldtype );
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.BR pthread_setcancelstate ()
sets the cancelability state of the calling thread to the value
given in
.IR state .
The previous cancelability state of the thread is returned
in the buffer pointed to by
.IR oldstate .
The
.I state
argument must have one of the following values:
.TP
.B PTHREAD_CANCEL_ENABLE
The thread is cancelable.
This is the default cancelability state in all new threads,
including the initial thread.
The thread's cancelability type determines when a cancelable thread
will respond to a cancelation request.
.TP
.B PTHREAD_CANCEL_DISABLE
The thread is not cancelable.
If a cancelation request is received,
it is blocked until cancelability is enabled.
.P
The
.BR pthread_setcanceltype ()
sets the cancelability type of the calling thread to the value
given in
.IR type .
The previous cancelability type of the thread is returned
in the buffer pointed to by
.IR oldtype .
The
.I type
argument must have one of the following values:
.TP
.B PTHREAD_CANCEL_DEFERRED
A cancelation request is deferred until the thread next calls
a function that is a cancelation point (see
.BR pthreads (7)).
This is the default cancelability type in all new threads,
including the initial thread.
.IP
Even with deferred cancelation, a
cancelation point in an asynchronous signal handler may still
be acted upon and the effect is as if it was an asynchronous
cancelation.
.TP
.B PTHREAD_CANCEL_ASYNCHRONOUS
The thread can be canceled at any time.
(Typically,
it will be canceled immediately upon receiving a cancelation request,
but the system doesn't guarantee this.)
.P
The set-and-get operation performed by each of these functions
is atomic with respect to other threads in the process
calling the same function.
.SH RETURN VALUE
On success, these functions return 0;
on error, they return a nonzero error number.
.SH ERRORS
The
.BR pthread_setcancelstate ()
can fail with the following error:
.TP
.B EINVAL
Invalid value for
.IR state .
.P
The
.BR pthread_setcanceltype ()
can fail with the following error:
.TP
.B EINVAL
Invalid value for
.IR type .
.SH ATTRIBUTES
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see
.BR attributes (7).
.TS
allbox;
lbx lb lb
l l l.
Interface	Attribute	Value
T{
.na
.nh
.BR pthread_setcancelstate (),
.BR pthread_setcanceltype ()
T}	Thread safety	T{
.na
.nh
MT-Safe
T}
T{
.na
.nh
.BR pthread_setcancelstate (),
.BR pthread_setcanceltype ()
T}	Async-cancel safety	T{
.na
.nh
AC-Safe
T}
.TE
.SH STANDARDS
POSIX.1-2008.
.SH HISTORY
glibc 2.0
POSIX.1-2001.
.SH NOTES
For details of what happens when a thread is canceled, see
.BR \%pthread_cancel (3).
.P
Briefly disabling cancelability is useful
if a thread performs some critical action
that must not be interrupted by a cancelation request.
Beware of disabling cancelability for long periods,
or around operations that may block for long periods,
since that will render the thread unresponsive to cancelation requests.
.SS Asynchronous cancelability
Setting the cancelability type to
.B PTHREAD_CANCEL_ASYNCHRONOUS
is rarely useful.
Since the thread could be canceled at
.I any
time, it cannot safely reserve resources (e.g., allocating memory with
.BR malloc (3)),
acquire mutexes, semaphores, or locks, and so on.
Reserving resources is unsafe because the application has no way of
knowing what the state of these resources is when the thread is canceled;
that is, did cancelation occur before the resources were reserved,
while they were reserved, or after they were released?
Furthermore, some internal data structures
(e.g., the linked list of free blocks managed by the
.BR malloc (3)
family of functions) may be left in an inconsistent state
if cancelation occurs in the middle of the function call.
Consequently, clean-up handlers cease to be useful.
.P
Functions that can be safely asynchronously canceled are called
.IR "async-cancel-safe functions" .
POSIX.1-2001 and POSIX.1-2008 require only that
.BR pthread_cancel (3),
.BR pthread_setcancelstate (),
and
.BR pthread_setcanceltype ()
be async-cancel-safe.
In general, other library functions
can't be safely called from an asynchronously cancelable thread.
.P
One of the few circumstances in which asynchronous cancelability is useful
is for cancelation of a thread that is in a pure compute-bound loop.
.SS Portability notes
The Linux threading implementations permit the
.I oldstate
argument of
.BR pthread_setcancelstate ()
to be NULL, in which case the information about the previous
cancelability state is not returned to the caller.
Many other implementations also permit a NULL
.I oldstat
argument,
.\" It looks like at least Solaris, FreeBSD and Tru64 support this.
but POSIX.1 does not specify this point,
so portable applications should always specify a non-NULL value in
.IR oldstate .
A precisely analogous set of statements applies for the
.I oldtype
argument of
.BR pthread_setcanceltype ().
.SH EXAMPLES
See
.BR pthread_cancel (3).
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR pthread_cancel (3),
.BR pthread_cleanup_push (3),
.BR pthread_testcancel (3),
.BR pthreads (7)