QTimer 对象是否在单独的线程中运行?它的机制是什么? [英] Does a QTimer object run in a separate thread? What is its mechanism?

问题描述

当我在 Qt 5 中创建一个 QTimer 对象，并使用 start() 成员函数启动它时，会创建一个单独的线程来跟踪时间和定期调用 timeout() 函数?

When I create a QTimer object in Qt 5, and start it using the start() member function, is a separate thread created that keeps track of the time and calls the timeout() function at regular intervals?

例如

QTimer *timer = new QTimer;
timer->start(10);
connect(timer,SIGNAL(timeout()),someObject,SLOT(someFunction()));

这里，程序如何知道timeout()何时发生?我认为它必须在单独的线程中运行，因为我看不到顺序程序如何跟踪时间并同时继续执行.但是，我无法在 Qt 文档或其他任何地方找到任何关于此的信息来确认这一点.

Here, how does the program know when timeout() occurs? I think it would have to run in a separate thread, as I don't see how a sequential program could keep track of the time and continue its execution simultaneously. However, I have been unable to find any information regarding this either in the Qt documentation or anywhere else to confirm this.

我已阅读官方文档，以及有关 StackOverflow 的某些问题，例如这个和这个 看起来很相关，但我无法通过它们得到答案.

I have read the official documentation, and certain questions on StackOverflow such as this and this seem very related, but I could not get my answer through them.

谁能解释一下 QTimer 对象的工作机制?

Could anyone explain the mechanism through which a QTimer object works?

在进一步搜索后，我发现根据 这个答案的内容.com/users/102/bill">Bill，提到

On searching further, I found that as per this answer by Bill, it is mentioned that

事件由操作系统异步传递，这就是为什么似乎还有其他事情发生的原因.有，但不在您的程序中.

Events are delivered asynchronously by the OS, which is why it appears that there's something else going on. There is, but not in your program.

这是否意味着 timeout() 是由操作系统处理的?是否有一些硬件可以跟踪时间并以适当的时间间隔发送中断?但如果是这样，由于许多计时器可以同时独立运行，那么如何单独跟踪每个计时器?

Does it mean that timeout() is handled by the OS? Is there some hardware that keeps track of the time and send interrupts at appropriate intervals? But if this is the case, as many timers can run simultaneously and independently, how can each timer be separately tracked?

机制是什么?

谢谢.

推荐答案

当我在 Qt 5 中创建一个 QTimer 对象，并使用 start() 启动它时成员函数，是一个单独的线程，用于跟踪time 并定期调用 timeout() 函数?

When I create a QTimer object in Qt 5, and start it using the start() member function, is a separate thread created that keeps track of the time and calls the timeout() function at regular intervals?

没有；创建一个单独的线程会很昂贵而且没有必要，所以这不是 QTimer 的实现方式.

No; creating a separate thread would be expensive and it isn't necessary, so that isn't how QTimer is implemented.

这里，程序如何知道 timeout() 何时发生?

Here, how does the program know when timeout() occurs?

QTimer::start() 方法可以调用系统时间函数(例如 gettimeofday() 或类似的)找出(在几毫秒内)调用 start() 的时间.然后，它可以将 10 毫秒(或您指定的任何值)添加到该时间，现在它有一个记录，指示接下来应该发出 timeout() 信号的时间.

The QTimer::start() method can call a system time function (e.g. gettimeofday() or similar) to find out (to within a few milliseconds) what the time was that start() was called. It can then add ten milliseconds (or whatever value you specified) to that time and now it has a record indicating when the timeout() signal is supposed to be emitted next.

那么有了这些信息，它会做什么来确保发生这种情况?

So having that information, what does it then do to make sure that happens?

要知道的关键事实是，QTimer 超时信号发射仅在/当您的 Qt 程序在 Qt 的事件循环内执行时才有效.几乎每个 Qt 程序都会有这样的东西，通常靠近底部的 main() 函数:

The key fact to know is that QTimer timeout-signal-emission only works if/when your Qt program is executing inside Qt's event loop. Just about every Qt program will have something like this, usually near the bottom its main() function:

QApplication app(argc, argv);
[...]
app.exec();

请注意，在典型的应用程序中，几乎所有应用程序的时间都将花费在 exec() 调用中；也就是说，在应用程序退出之前，app.exec() 调用不会返回.

Note that in a typical application, almost all of the application's time will be spent inside that exec() call; that is to say, the app.exec() call will not return until it's time for the application to exit.

那么当您的程序运行时，exec() 调用内部发生了什么?对于像 Qt 这样的大型复杂库，它必然很复杂，但说它运行的事件循环在概念上看起来像这样并不过分简单化:

So what is going on inside that exec() call while your program is running? With a big complex library like Qt it's necessarily complicated, but it's not too much of a simplification to say that it's running an event loop that looks conceptually something like this:

 while(1)
 {
     SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo();  // not a real function name!
     DoTheThingsThatNeedDoingNow();     // this is also a name I made up
     if (timeToQuit) break;
 }

因此，当您的应用程序空闲时，该进程将在 SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() 调用中进入睡眠状态，但是一旦需要处理的事件到达(例如，用户移动鼠标，或按下某个键，或数据到达)在套接字等上)，SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() 将返回，然后响应该事件的代码将被执行，从而导致适当的操作，例如小部件更新或 timeout() 信号被调用.

So when your app is idle, the process will be put to sleep inside the SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() call, but as soon as an event arrives that needs handling (e.g. the user moves the mouse, or presses a key, or data arrives on a socket, or etc), SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() will return and then the code to respond to that event will be executed, resulting in the appropriate action such as the widgets updating or the timeout() signal being called.

那么SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo()如何知道什么时候该醒来并返回呢?这将根据您运行的操作系统而有很大差异，因为不同的操作系统具有不同的 API 来处理此类事情，但是实现此类功能的经典 UNIX-y 方法是使用 POSIX select() 调用:

So how does SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() know when it is time to wake up and return? This will vary greatly depending on what OS you are running on, since different OS's have different APIs for handling this sort of thing, but a classic UNIX-y way to implement such a function would be with the POSIX select() call:

int select(int nfds, 
           fd_set *readfds, 
           fd_set *writefds,
           fd_set *exceptfds, 
           struct timeval *timeout);

注意 select() 接受三个不同的 fd_set 参数，每个参数可以指定多个文件描述符；通过将适当的 fd_set 对象传递给这些参数，您可以使 select() 在您关心的一组文件描述符中的任何一个上进行 I/O 操作时唤醒，以便您的程序可以处理I/O 无延迟.然而，对我们来说有趣的部分是最后一个参数，它是一个超时参数.特别是，您可以在此处传入一个 struct timeval 对象，该对象对 select() 表示:如果在(这么多)微秒之后没有发生 I/O 事件，那么您应该放弃并返回无论如何".

Note that select() takes three different fd_set arguments, each of which can specify a number of file descriptors; by passing in the appropriate fd_set objects to those arguments you can cause select() to wake up the instant an I/O operations becomes possible on any one of a set of file descriptors you care to monitor, so that your program can then handle the I/O without delay. However, the interesting part for us is the final argument, which is a timeout-argument. In particular, you can pass in a struct timeval object here that says to select(): "If no I/O events have occurred after (this many) microseconds, then you should just give up and return anyway".

事实证明这非常有用，因为通过使用该参数，SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() 函数可以执行以下操作(伪代码):

That turns out to be very useful, because by using that parameter, the SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() function can do something like this (pseudocode):

void SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo()
{
   struct timeval now = gettimeofday();  // get the current time
   struct timeval nextQTimerTime = [...];  // time at which we want to emit a timeout() signal, as was calculated earlier inside QTimer::start()
   struct timeval maxSleepTimeInterval = (nextQTimerTime-now);
   select([...], &maxSleepTimeInterval);  // sleep until the appointed time (or until I/O arrives, whichever comes first)
}

void DoTheThingsThatNeedDoingNow()
{
   // Is it time to emit the timeout() signal yet?
   struct timeval now = gettimeofday();
   if (now >= nextQTimerTime) emit timeout();

   [... do any other stuff that might need doing as well ...]
}   

希望这是有道理的，您可以看到事件循环如何使用 select() 的超时参数来允许它在(大约)之前计算的时间唤醒并发出 timeout() 信号调用 start().

Hopefully that makes sense, and you can see how the event loop uses select()'s timeout argument to allow it to wake up and emit the timeout() signal at (approximately) the time that it had previously calculated when you called start().

顺便说一句，如果应用程序同时有多个 QTimer 处于活动状态，那没问题；在这种情况下，SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() 只需要遍历所有活动的 QTimer 以找到下一个超时时间戳最小的那个，并仅使用该最小时间戳来计算 select() 的最大时间间隔应该是允许睡觉的.然后在 select() 返回后，DoTheThingsThatNeedDoingNow() 还会遍历活动计时器，并仅针对下一次超时时间戳不大于当前时间的计时器发出超时信号.事件循环重复(根据需要快或慢)以提供多线程行为的外观，而实际上不需要多个线程.

Btw if the app has more than one QTimer active simultaneously, that's no problem; in that case, SleepUntilThereIsSomethingToDo() just needs to iterate over all of the active QTimers to find the one with the smallest next-timeout-time stamp, and use only that minimum timestamp for its calculation of the maximum time-interval that select() should be allowed to sleep for. Then after select() returns, DoTheThingsThatNeedDoingNow() also iterates over the active timers and emits a timeout signal only for those whose next-timeout-time stamp is not greater than the current time. The event-loop repeats (as quickly or as slowly as necessary) to give a semblance of multithreaded behavior without actually requiring multiple threads.

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