dereferencing IO::Socket::INET from a thread

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

Hi, I'm trying to write to all threads on a multi-threaded INET server. I basically have it going, but I've run into a situation where I'm trying to extract the $client name from a reference, and can't seem to find the way. Now I'm wondering if it's even possible. The code is long, and rather than waste disk space, I will just show the basic code and the Dumper outputs.

I'm creating 3 threads each with a socket connection. When I save the $clients in @clients, I can loop thru the @clients array and print to each $client. But when I try to save $thr to @thrs, I cannot get the $client back out to print to it. I can get the thread's tid, but that's it.

So my question is this:

Can I get the thread's $client name from the information provided in the Dump of @thrs? For instance, I can loop through @clients and print to each thread. But how do I convert the @thrs to usable $client names in order to print to it?

for(1..3){
         $client = $listener->accept;
         my $thr = threads->create(\&start_thread, $client, ++$client_
+num);
         push(@clients,$client);
         push(@thrs,$thr);
         print 'Dump of @clients-> ',Dumper([@clients]),"\n";
         print 'Dump of @thrs-> ',Dumper([@thrs]),"\n";
}
##############################################

Dump of @clients-> $VAR1 = [
          bless( \*Symbol::GEN1, 'IO::Socket::INET' ),
          bless( \*Symbol::GEN2, 'IO::Socket::INET' ),
          bless( \*Symbol::GEN3, 'IO::Socket::INET' )
        ];

Dump of @thrs-> $VAR1 = [
          bless( do{\(my $o = '137520752')}, 'threads' ),
          bless( do{\(my $o = '138536664')}, 'threads' ),
          bless( do{\(my $o = '138556504')}, 'threads' )
        ];
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Re: dereferencing IO::Socket::INET from a thread by bschmer (Friar) on Nov 21, 2003 at 16:20 UTC
Couldn't you just save the clients as a hash keyed by `$thr` instead of as an array? I would think that this would take care of your problem by tracking the information in the main thread as opposed to getting it back from each of the individual threads.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: dereferencing IO::Socket::INET from a thread by zentara (Cardinal) on Nov 21, 2003 at 16:40 UTC
Yes, I've done it that way, with a %thr hash, and it works like you suggest. But it only works from the main program. What I'm eventually aiming at is to print to the other threads from a thread. When I try to use threads::shared on @clients or %thrs, and try to access them from each thread, each thread dosn't see a thread created after it was created. But each thread will return the same list if I call threads->list. But here's the gotcha, the list returned in each thread from threads->list, is of the form in @thrs , which presents the same dereferencing problem, which I'm asking. I hope I made sense.	[reply]