pthread_exit() in C++

Today I ran into an interesting problem that I would like to share. I am working on multi-threaded code in C++. Here’s what happened.

I started a thread that looks like this:

try {
    do_something()
} catch (...) {
    std::cout << "Got unknown exception" << std::endl;
}

The do_something() routine eventually called pthread_exit().

Once I ran this piece of code, I instantly got an unknown exception notification. Long story short, here’s what I found out.

When calling pthread_exit() in C++, it has to destruct all objects that has been created on stack. This process called stack unwinding and this is exactly what happens when you throw an exception. pthread_exit() utilizes this feature of C++ to cleanup before shutting down the thread for good.

To do that pthread_exit() throws some obscure exception and catches it right before ditching the thread. This way it cleans up all objects nicely. On the other hand, catching … becomes impossible.

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3. Signal handling in Linux