The execution of a thread terminates in one of the following ways:
The thread’s start function performs a return specifying a return value for the thread.
The thread is canceled using pthread_cancel() (described in Canceling a Thread).
Any of the threads calls exit(), or the main thread performs a return (in the main() function), which causes all threads in the process to terminate immediately.
The pthread_exit() function terminates the calling thread, and specifies a return value that can be obtained in another thread by calling pthread_join().
include <pthread.h>
void pthread_exit(void *retval);Calling pthread_exit() is equivalent to performing a return in the thread’s start function, with the difference that pthread_exit() can be called from any function that has been called by the thread’s start function.
The retval argument specifies the return value for the thread. The value pointed to by retval should not be located on the thread’s stack, since the contents of that stack become undefined on thread termination. (For example, that region of the process’s virtual memory might be immediately reused by the stack for a new thread.) The same statement applies to the value given to a return statement in the thread’s start function.
If the main thread calls pthread_exit() instead of calling exit() or performing a return, then the other threads continue to execute.