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MFC C++ Naming threads for debugger

Inside MS Dev Studio 2003.net when you are debugging and looking at the threads window. The name of most of the threads is "_threadstartex". Is there a way to assign a useful name to the thread so I can very quickly look in this window and figure out what the threads are? Thanks

I'm assuming the app you are developing is .NET and not, say a regular console/C++ app using windows threads. On the Thread class there is a property called "name". I would think that MS/VS would use this property for display purposes, but I haven't done enough .NET programming to know for sure.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...mberstopic.asp

It is unmanaged C++ and I am using AfxBeginThread to start the worker threads. I have 100's of threads running and it would be nice to scan the threads window and look at the names to determine which thread it is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MXL

This is from the Visual Studio .NET documentation:

Quote:

This is for Unmanaged C/C++ only. To set a thread name in your program, use the SetThreadName function, as shown in the following example:

//
// Usage: SetThreadName (-1, "MainThread");
//
typedef struct tagTHREADNAME_INFO
{
DWORD dwType; // must be 0x1000
LPCSTR szName; // pointer to name (in user addr space)
DWORD dwThreadID; // thread ID (-1=caller thread)
DWORD dwFlags; // reserved for future use, must be zero
} THREADNAME_INFO;

void SetThreadName( DWORD dwThreadID, LPCSTR szThreadName)
{
THREADNAME_INFO info;
info.dwType = 0x1000;
info.szName = szThreadName;
info.dwThreadID = dwThreadID;
info.dwFlags = 0;

__try
{
RaiseException( 0x406D1388, 0, sizeof(info)/sizeof(DWORD), (DWORD*)&info );
}
except(EXCEPTION_CONTINUE_EXECUTION)
{
}
}

So with that code and assuming it still works with Dev Studio 2003.NET (if the RaiseException breaks or something, look for SetThreadName in the index of your docs), just do
CWinThread * pThread = AfxBeginThread(...);
SetThreadName(pThread->m_nThreadID, "Foo");

edit: fixed a typo in the doc: the line
info.dwThreadID = dwThreadID;
was originally
info.dwThreadID = dwThread;
but that's obviously a compiler error since there is no variable dwThread.

Thanks, that worked, and it so well documented by Microsoft too.