If you posted all your code, you have a race condition.
main
is synchronized with the start of worker
but not worker2
.
That is, main
is trying to join th_worker2
before worker
has had a chance to invoke pthread_create
and set up th_worker2
with a valid [non-null] value.
So, th_worker2
will be invalid until the second pthread_create
completes, but that's already too late for main
. It has already fetched th_worker2
, which has a NULL value and main
will segfault.
When you add the join for th_worker
, it works because it guarantees synchronization and no race condition.
To achieve this guarantee without the join, have main do:
int
main()
{
char *str = "hello thread";
pthread_create(&th_worker, NULL, worker, (void *) str);
// give worker enough time to properly start worker2
while (! th_worker2)
usleep(100);
/* problem in here */
join(th_worker2);
return 1;
}
An even better way to do this is to add an extra variable. With this, the first loop is not needed [but I've left it in]:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <pthread.h>
int worker_running;
pthread_t th_worker;
int worker2_running;
pthread_t th_worker2;
void *
worker2(void *data)
{
// tell main we're fully functional
worker2_running = 1;
for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
printf("thread for worker2----%d\n", i);
usleep(500);
}
return NULL;
}
void *
worker(void *data)
{
// tell main we're fully functional
worker_running = 1;
pthread_create(&th_worker2, NULL, worker2, data);
for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
printf("thread for worker-----%d\n", i);
usleep(500);
}
return NULL;
}
void
join(pthread_t _th)
{
pthread_join(_th, NULL);
}
int
main()
{
char *str = "hello thread";
pthread_create(&th_worker, NULL, worker, (void *) str);
// give worker enough time to properly start worker2
// NOTE: this not necessarily needed as loop below is better
while (! th_worker2)
usleep(100);
// give worker2 enough time to completely start
while (! worker2_running)
usleep(100);
/* problem in here (not anymore!) */
join(th_worker2);
return 1;
}