Hello everyone! Thanks for all the help I already got. And excuse my poor understanding of of multithreading. I would like to implement a "multiple producer single consumer" pattern. My current solution is working with signals, which, I think is not very efficient. And also it doesn't work properly with the code I have, (see end of this mail). But besides that problem I have a generic question. If I worked with buffers and mutex, there are two choices, it seems: 1. Use one buffer, at the cost of deletion from the middle, when one producer terminates (so consumer won't communicate with a dead thread). 2. Have a buffer per producer, but also have a synchronisation per buffer and the consumer must look in several buffers, plus I don't know, how many producers there will be. This all should lead to a user interface, with different input-methods. So what would you suggest? It must be speedy and very CPU friendly. Thanks in advance for consideration. I'd also be happy for some suggested reading. Only one thing: printed books or documents in non-plain-text form besides .doc, .pdf and .ps aren't of any use to me, for I'm blind and using Linux text based environment. Kindest regards (For code, see below) Julien *** CODE SNIPPET *** boost::mutex my_mtx; // the Mutex for passing on events/chars // assumptions: // the following variables are passed to the Input object as a reference // int& its_q_size; // condition& its_in_condition; // condition& its_out_condition; // boost::signals2::signal<void (char)>& its_sig; void Input::run() { char input; boost::unique_lock<boost::mutex> lk(my_mtx); while (input != 'q') { cin >> input; while (its_q_size != 0) { its_in_condition.wait(lk); } its_sig(input); its_q_size = 0; its_out_condition.notify_all(); } } void Controller::run() { sig_t sig; // passed as its_sig condition in_condition, out_condition; // passed respectively as // its_incondition and its_out_condition int q_size = 0; // passed as char input; boost::unique_lock<boost::mutex> lk(my_mtx); Input *ip = new Input(in_condition,out_condition,sig,q_size); ip->connect(bind(&Controller::slot1, this, _1)); ip->connect(boost::bind(&Controller::slot2, this, _1)); thread runner(boost::bind(&Input::run, ip)); // why no third param _1 // here? With one it won't compiler! while (input != 'q') { while (q_size != 1) { out_condition.wait(lk); } // Do something with data received from the slots q_size = 0; in_condition.notify_all(); } runner.join(); } *** END OF CODE *** Effects: Read once, send signal, read again print info from first read and send signal again. Only really sync, when q is pressed. I expect due to runner-thread ending. -------- Music was my first love and it will be my last (John Miles) ======== FIND MY WEB-PROJECT AT: ======== http://ltsb.sourceforge.net the Linux TextBased Studio guide ======= AND MY PERSONAL PAGES AT: ======= http://www.juliencoder.de