I'm using threads and threads::shared in a small Perl HTTP server (ActivePerl 5.8.4/Windows XP). Each new connection will spawn a thread to handle requests until the connection is closed. The server will ultimately be compiled with perl2exe to run without a console. Rather than forcing use of Windows task manager to shut the server down, I want a privileged user on localhost to be able to shut it down from a webpage. This means that the command to shut down will be retrieved by one of the request handler threads. I notice that if I just exit from the thread, the application terminates, but usually with a warning that other threads were running when the thread exited. I know this may not be the cleanest way to do it, but it sure is easy!

So my questions are, "How bad is this -- really? Might open sockets be left open? Are there other consequences of such a graceless termination that I need to be aware of?"

In reply to Exiting from a thread. by Dr. Mu

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