Some Thread question

SDL Development
#1

Hi,
I’m coding a project in C++ right now and I got a few
problems/Questions about Threads under SDL…

First,  a Paste :

main()
{
…
updateTHREAD = SDL_CreateThread(visual.refresh_thread(), NULL);
cout << “Thread Initialized…” << endl;
…
}

/** This is the Refresh Thread */
int Viewport::refresh_thread()
{
while(refresh_switch)
{
if(needRefresh() == 1) {
Viewport::refresh();
cout << "Refresh Switch : " << refresh_switch << endl;
}

	SDL_Delay(20);
}

return(0);
}

If you look at my paste in the main() function… The Thread Does start but it
doesn’t continue to run my main function … it keep running the While loop in
my thread without caring about what’s next in my main() function (that mean I
never see “Thread Initialized on the Screen”… Any idea why ? I do put a delay
of 20 ms in my while loop…

And now for the Questions :)

Wtf is a Mutex :)  ok I got the  prototypes of the threads function

(it’s pretty strait forward…) except for this mutex thing… Is there a place
where I could find more Info about Mutex and their use ?

A last question : is this good to create a Thread like I did that look whenever
a viewport need to be refreshed and if yes refresh it calling the
viewport.refresh() ?

Thanks a lot
Jeremie Plante (working on the RPGen Project …
homepage almost ready !)

#2 
    Wtf is a Mutex :)  ok I got the  prototypes of the threads function

(it’s pretty strait forward…) except for this mutex thing… Is there a place
where I could find more Info about Mutex and their use ?
Mutually Exclusive – All threads may read the mutex, so, if thread one
and two both have a pointer to some data structure (in which you have
thoughfully included a mutex) and thread 2 locks the mutex thread 1 will
know not to access the structure until 2 is done with it.