Easy Way to Use Threads in Visual C++ (VC++)

a bare minimum of what you need to use threads in VC++. Threads allow your program to do multiple things at the same time (multithreading) instead of in a linear sequence. For instance, you could have your program doing an infinately looped complex task and at the same time be waiting for the user to enter a 'stop' key. Using multithreading, the user could press the 'stop' key at _any_ time to stop the program.

Step 1: #including the Propper Stuff

even if you have already started an app as a non MFC console application, you can use threads in your app.

1) First, go into setting and set it so that it uses MFC as a static library

2) Then add #include below the #include "stdafx" that should already be in your program

3) meanwhile, if you have
#include "windows.h" or #include "mmsystem.h"
put these two _above_ the #include "stdafx.h"

4) Be careful, the order in which you declare the #includes matters a lot!! (if the way you have it gives errors during compile, reorder them til it works).

Step 2: Write the Necessary Code

Below is all the code you need to add threads to your project.

UINT LeesThread( LPVOID pParam )
is the thread, put your thread code in there (it's like a function)

AfxBeginThread(LeesThread, TempChar);
is the code that starts your thread, in this example it's at the start of the main() function.

TempChar
is just a character pointer that needs to be sent to the thread for some reason, the value of it doesn't matter.

Note: This has worked fine for me in many programs, everywhere I read about how to make threads has been pretty complicated, so although this will work, it's probably not technically correct. I don't care, it works:

//#############################################
//############---CODE BELOW---#################
//#############################################

#include

char* TempChar;


UINT LeesThread( LPVOID pParam )
{
//--put your thread code here
//--use a while(TRUE) loop if you want it to run continuously
return 0;
}

void main()
{
//--Start your thread (in this case, LeesThread)
AfxBeginThread(LeesThread, TempChar);
}