🚀 go-pugleaf

"Oliver Rutsch" <orutsch@sympatec.com> wrote in message 
news:429dd4f1@newsgroups.borland.com...
> Hi, Matt.
>
>> I have a fairly large C++ Builder 6 project I would like to make 
>> threaded. Apart from the main class which handles most of the UI, I have 
>> two other major C++ classes that are just about pure C++ with no VCL. I 
>> would like to convert these to threaded classes. This is a simulation of 
>> artificial life. One of the classes is instantiated anything up to one 
>> hundred times [the living animals] and the other up to three or four 
>> hundred [the food]. This would mean I would have upwards of 500 threads, 
>> is this possibly under Windows XP?
>>
>
> 500? I think it is possible but it makes no sense. Why must every object 
> have it's own thread? Why not only a few (e.g. num of CPU's) threads who 
> manage theses objects? Too many threads will loose a lot of time with OS 
> switching between the threads.

This is a conversion of an existing application which has many instances of 
these two classes. As they have quite a bit of code in each to handle 
behaviour I could not think of any other logical way of threading each so 
they run independently of each other.

>> access. The way I intend to use them is have each thread start suspended 
>> and use a timer on my main form to trigger the resuming of each thread. 
>> They go off and do their thing, and suspend themselves when the work is 
>> done. The next time the timer is activated it first checks the threads 
>> are all suspended [i.e. they all finished doing their work last time 
>> round]. This is the snag.
>
> When the Execute() function of a TThread object is done, then the thread 
> doesn't run anymore and can't run again without making a new instance of 
> your thread object. Resume() and Suspend() make no sense on a thread which 
> has left the Execute() function. If you don't wan't to make new instances 
> of your threads every time, then you should apply a state machine in your 
> thread where you can pause, run and exit your thread (everything has to be 
> done in a loop in Execute()!). Resume() and Suspend() aren't suited for 
> controlling running threads as you don't know the state of your thread 
> when it suspends/resumes.

My Execute function is running a loop already that repeats 
EstablishBehaviour followed by Suspend. My main class then uses a timer to 
Resume them so the EstablishBehaviour is run again. The Execute function is 
not ended until the simulation is terminated or the application exited. Here 
is the actual code:

void __fastcall TAgent::Execute (void)
{
 do
 {
  SetName ();
  EstablishBehaviour ();
  //debugMe (Format("SUSPENDING %d", ARRAYOFCONST((myId))).c_str());
  Suspend ();
 } while (!Terminated);
}


-- 
Matt Ross

-=I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on tape.=-