In errno.h, this variable is declared as extern int errno; so my question is, is it safe to check errno value after some calls or use perror() in multi-threaded code. Is this a thread safe variable? If not, then whats the alternative ?
I am using linux with gcc on x86 architecture.
We can check by running a simple program on a machine.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <errno.h>
#define NTHREADS 5
void *thread_function(void *);
int
main()
{
pthread_t thread_id[NTHREADS];
int i, j;
for(i=0; i < NTHREADS; i++)
{
pthread_create( &thread_id[i], NULL, thread_function, NULL );
}
for(j=0; j < NTHREADS; j++)
{
pthread_join( thread_id[j], NULL);
}
return 0;
}
void *thread_function(void *dummyPtr)
{
printf("Thread number %ld addr(errno):%p\n", pthread_self(), &errno);
}
Running this program and you can see different addresses for errno in each thread. The output of a run on my machine looked like:-
Thread number 140672336922368 addr(errno):0x7ff0d4ac0698
Thread number 140672345315072 addr(errno):0x7ff0d52c1698
Thread number 140672328529664 addr(errno):0x7ff0d42bf698
Thread number 140672320136960 addr(errno):0x7ff0d3abe698
Thread number 140672311744256 addr(errno):0x7ff0d32bd698
Notice that address is different for all threads.