How to check whether the thread is alive or dead?

In multi-threaded environments, sometimes we need to check whether a given thread is alive or not. But how can we check it?

Picture courtesy – Erica Marshall

You can use the function – GetExitCodeThread(). If thread is alive, the function returns STILL_ACTIVE. Have a look at the code snippet.

// Checks whether given thread is alive.
bool IsThreadAlive(const HANDLE hThread, bool& bAlive )
{
 // Read thread's exit code.
 DWORD dwExitCode = 0;
 if( GetExitCodeThread(hThread, &dwExitCode))
 {
 // if return code is STILL_ACTIVE,
 // then thread is live.
 bAlive = (dwExitCode == STILL_ACTIVE);
 return true;
 }

 // Check failed.
 return false;
}

void main()
{
 bool bAlive = false;
 if( IsThreadAlive( GetCurrentThread(), bAlive))
 {
 // IsThreadAlive is success.
 // Now check whether thread is alive.
 // It should, because its our main thread.  
 if( bAlive)
 {
 std::cout << "Thread Alive!!!";
 }
 }
}