Delayed start of a thread in C++ 11

Question

I\'m getting into C++11 threads and have run into a problem.

I want to declare a thread variable as global and start it later.

However all the examples I\'ve

Answer 1

I would give the thread a condition variable and a boolean called startRunning (initially set to false). Effectively you would start the thread immediately upon creation, but the first thing it would do is suspend itself (using the condition_variable) and then only begin processing its actual task when the condition_variable is signaled from outside (and the startRunning flag set to true).

EDIT: PSEUDO CODE:

// in your worker thread
{
    lock_guard l( theMutex );

    while ( ! startRunning )
    {
        cond_var.wait( l );
    }
}

// now start processing task


// in your main thread (after creating the worker thread)
{
    lock_guard l( theMutex );
    startRunning = true;
    cond_var.signal_one();
}

EDIT #2: In the above code, the variables theMutex, startRunning and cond_var must be accessible by both threads. Whether you achieve that by making them globals or by encapsulating them in a struct / class instance is up to you.