How do you set the name of a thread in C++?

This is something that I've been able to do in linux development, but I have not figureed it out in Visual C++. I've noticed that the thread list contains names, however they are always the same and I cannot seem to find the way to name them.

This is not an MFC application. Currently, I'm using _beginthreadex to create the thread.

[337 byte] By [jheddings] at [2007-12-22]

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# 1

See the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsdebug/html/vxtsksettingthreadname.asp

einaros at 2007-8-30 >

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# 2

That looks promissing... I can use it to set the name of the caller thread, but when I try to set it using the ID returned by CreateThread, it does not seem to work. Any ideas?

jheddings at 2007-8-30 >

# 3

Does it work on the current thread (-1) ?

einaros at 2007-8-30 >

# 4

Yes...

jheddings at 2007-8-30 >

# 5

If you've got sufficient access to the other thread, which you should have after spawning it with CreateThread, I don't know why it could fail. You're absolutely certain that the ID is correct? As an alternative you could construct a mechanism for the thread to set its own name after being created, that should work in any case.

einaros at 2007-8-30 >

# 6

I've tried a few things here...

1. Immediately after CreateThread(...), call SetThreadName(...). This doesn't seem to have any effect. The name reverts back to the name of the supplied ThreadProc, so I'm assuming either the debugger doesn't know about the thread yet, so ignores the exception, or it is overwritten when the thread starts. In this case, the thread ID I'm using is directly back from the call to CreateThread(...). This would be my preferred method, since the name is set before the thread entry, which would aid in debugging.

2. Call SetThreadName(-1, <name>) when the ThreadProc is called. This does work for me. It is a little bit of a pain to get the mechanism in place, but it works.

3. Just before the ThreadProc is called, try to SetThreadName(...) using the m_pid from CreateThread(...). This seems to work some of the time, but not reliably.

Thanks for your help on this one...

jheddings at 2007-8-30 >

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