Name your threads in the VC debugger thread list

Introduction

Some days ago, someone asked me if it is possible to rename threads in the VC debugger. Because I worked at a multi threading project myself those days, I was very interested in realizing this idea. Some Google group searches later, I had a solution that is short and easy. Because this could be very helpful for everyone working on applications with many threads, I publish it here.

There isn't much to understand except, that the VC debugger gets the information about a thread's name via the exception #0x406D1388.

I put the necessary call into a simple function. Here is the code:

//

// Usage: SetThreadName (-1, "MainThread");

//

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;

void SetThreadName( DWORD dwThreadID, LPCSTR szThreadName)
{
  THREADNAME_INFO info;
  {
    info.dwType = 0x1000;
    info.szName = szThreadName;
    info.dwThreadID = dwThreadID;
    info.dwFlags = 0;
  }
  __try
  {
    RaiseException( 0x406D1388, 0, sizeof(info)/sizeof(DWORD), (DWORD*)&info );
  }
  __except (EXCEPTION_CONTINUE_EXECUTION)
  {
  }
}

You just have to call SetThreadName() with the thread ID and a name string as parameters.

Have fun with that tiny tool ;)