The example you've shown is a Cocoa idiom for creating a thread that will continue to run after the method -threadProc
exits. Why?
Because:
- the
NSRunLoop
instance you've created has at least one input source ([NSMachPort port]
) - you've explicitly started the run loop with
runMode:beforeDate
Without adding an input source and explicitly starting the run loop, the thread would terminate.
Parenthetically, although run loops are still vital for managing events and certain asynchronous tasks, I would not view NSThread
as the default way of architecting most asynchronous work in a Cocoa app nowadays. GCD is a far cleaner way of encapsulating background work.
EDIT:
Submitting work to a serial queue in GCD:
@interface Foo : NSObject
@end
@implementation Foo {
dispatch_queue_t _someWorkerQueue;
}
- (id)init {
self = [super init];
if( !self ) return nil;
_someWorkerQueue = dispatch_queue_create("com.company.MyWorkerQueue", 0);
return self;
}
- (void)performJob {
dispatch_async(_someWorkerQueue, ^{
//do some work asynchronously here
});
dispatch_async(_someWorkerQueue, ^{
//more asynchronous work here
});
}
@end