Worker Thread iOS

Question

I want to create a background thread on the iPhone that executes some code every 10msec. But before I get lost in the concurrency programming guide and the threading program

Answer 1

It's possible to do this using the method you outline, but have you looked at using Grand Central Dispatch? It can make some of this a lot easier:

dispatch_queue_t backgroundQueue = dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0);
dispatch_async(backgroundQueue, ^{
    while ([self shouldKeepProcessingInBackground]) {
        [self doBackgroundWork];
        usleep(1e4);
    }
})

You can also use a timer dispatch source to do work periodically:

dispatch_queue_t backgroundQueue = dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0);
dispatch_source_t timerSource = dispatch_source_create(DISPATCH_SOURCE_TYPE_TIMER, 0, 0, backgroundQueue);
dispatch_source_set_timer(timerSource, dispatch_time(DISPATCH_TIME_NOW, 0), 0.01*NSEC_PER_SEC, 0*NSEC_PER_SEC);
dispatch_source_set_event_handler(timerSource, ^{
    [self doBackgroundWork];
});
dispatch_resume(timerSource);