http://qs1969.pair.com?node_id=1072494

techman2006 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

How can I update a global variable across threads as I am getting garbage value for the variable across threads.

Below is sample code which shows the problem

use strict; use warnings; use threads; my $currentWrite = 10; my $totalSize = 1000; sub Progress { my $size = shift; $currentWrite += $size; my $currentProgress = $currentWrite / 100; print "Done ", $currentProgress, " of ", $totalSize, "\n"; } sub test { my $countRef = shift; my $count = $$countRef; Progress ( 11); print "Current count is $count\n"; } Progress(10); my $numThreads = 5; my @arrThreads; for my $i ( 1 .. $numThreads) { my $t = threads->create( \&test, \$i); push( @arrThreads, $t); } foreach (@arrThreads) { my $num = $_->join; }

Below is the output of above program.

# perl thrprog.pl Done 0.2 of 1000 Done 0.31 of 1000 Current count is 2 Done 0.31 of 1000 Current count is 1 Done 0.31 of 1000 Current count is 3 Done 0.31 of 1000 Current count is 4 Done 0.31 of 1000 Current count is 5

How to share the data across threads so that the value get updated properly.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Updating global variable in multi-threaded program
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Jan 29, 2014 at 12:04 UTC
    How to share the data across threads so that the value get updated properly.

    Mark the shared variables as shared. See threads::shared.

    Without any testing, something like:

    use strict; use warnings; use threads; use threads::shared; my $currentWrite :shared = 10; my $totalSize = 1000; sub Progress { my $size = shift; $currentWrite += $size; my $currentProgress = $currentWrite / 100; print "Done ", $currentProgress, " of ", $totalSize, "\n"; } sub test { my $countRef = shift; my $count = $$countRef; Progress ( 11); print "Current count is $count\n"; } Progress(10); my $numThreads = 5; my @arrThreads; for my $i ( 1 .. $numThreads) { my $t = threads->create( \&test, \$i); push( @arrThreads, $t); } foreach (@arrThreads) { my $num = $_->join; }

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Re: Updating global variable in multi-threaded program
by zentara (Archbishop) on Jan 29, 2014 at 12:53 UTC
Re: Updating global variable in multi-threaded program
by hdb (Monsignor) on Jan 29, 2014 at 12:20 UTC

    Besides sharing variables between threads, the documentation also explains how to lock shared variables to avoid clashes when multiple threads try to access a variable at the same time.