c++ - std::thread - naming your thread

Question

The new C++ has this std::thread type. Works like a charm. Now I would like to give each thread a name for more easy debugging (like java allows you to). With pthreads I would do:

pthread_setname_np(pthread_self(), "thread_name");

but how can I do this with c++0x? I know it uses pthreads underneath on Linux systems, but I would like to make my application portable. Is it possible at all?

Answer 1

A portable way to do this is to maintain a map of names, keyed by the thread's ID, obtained from thread::get_id(). Alternatively, as suggested in the comments, you could use a thread_local variable, if you only need to access the name from within the thread.

If you didn't need portability, then you could get the underlying pthread_t from thread::native_handle() and do whatever platform-specific shenanigans you like with that. Be aware that the _np on the thread naming functions means "not posix", so they aren't guaranteed to be available on all pthreads implementations.