How to: Set a Thread Name in Native Code

This topic applies to:

Edition	Visual Basic	C#	F#	C++	Web Developer
Express				Native only
Pro, Premium, and Ultimate				Native only

To set a thread name in your program, use the SetThreadName function, as shown in the following code example. Note that the thread name is copied to the thread so that the memory for the threadName parameter can be released.

Example

//
// Usage: SetThreadName (-1, "MainThread");
//
#include <windows.h>
const DWORD MS_VC_EXCEPTION=0x406D1388;

#pragma pack(push,8)
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;
#pragma pack(pop)

void SetThreadName( DWORD dwThreadID, char* threadName)
{
   THREADNAME_INFO info;
   info.dwType = 0x1000;
   info.szName = threadName;
   info.dwThreadID = dwThreadID;
   info.dwFlags = 0;

   __try
   {
      RaiseException( MS_VC_EXCEPTION, 0, sizeof(info)/sizeof(ULONG_PTR), (ULONG_PTR*)&info );
   }
   __except(EXCEPTION_EXECUTE_HANDLER)
   {
   }
}

See Also

Tasks

How to: Set a Thread Name in Managed Code

Concepts

Viewing Data in the Debugger

Other Resources

Debugging Multithreaded Applications