Thread names

Sometimes people want Racket threads to have useful names — for example to show in logger output. Here is one way to do it.

When you call thread it returns a thread descriptor.

You may also get the thread descriptor of the current thread using current-thread.

The printed representation of a thread descriptor includes the object-name of its thunk procedure.

Often the thunk is an anonymous function. In that case the function object-name is something like /path/to/file.rkt:1:3 — so the thread descriptor prints as #<thread:/path/to/file.rkt:1:3>.

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(thread (λ () #f)) ;=> #<thread:/tmp/thread.rkt:9:8>

It is more interesting when you name the thunk:

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(define (foo) #f)
(thread foo) ;=> #<thread:foo>

You can also use object-name on the thread descriptor to extract the thunk’s object-name as a symbol:

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(object-name (thread (λ () #f))) ;=> '/tmp/thread.rkt:18:21
(object-name (thread foo))       ;=> 'foo

What if you start 10 threads that all use the same thunk procedure? You can use procedure-rename to rename the thunk each time:

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(thread (procedure-rename foo 'bar)) ;=> #<thread:bar>
(thread (procedure-rename foo 'baz)) ;=> #<thread:baz>

The new name can be any symbol — including one generated at runtime:

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(define (now-sym) 
  (string->symbol (~a (current-inexact-milliseconds))))
(thread (procedure-rename foo (now-sym))) ;=> ex: #<thread:1541116698791.029>
(thread (procedure-rename foo (now-sym))) ;=> ex: #<thread:1541116698791.18>

Of course, you can include in the generated name any interesting identifying information from your problem domain — such as an “ID” or other details about a “job”, “request”, or “message”.

So something like this:

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#lang at-exp racket/base

(require racket/format)

(define-logger thor)

(define (thor)
  (log-thor-debug @~a{hammering job @(object-name (current-thread))}))

(define (job-id) 
  (string->symbol (~a (current-inexact-milliseconds))))

(thread (procedure-rename thor (job-id)))
(thread (procedure-rename thor (job-id)))

Can produce logger output like this:

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[  debug] thor: hammering job 1541119025888.965
[  debug] thor: hammering job 1541119025889.021

In conclusion, it is possible for threads to have unique names in Racket — provided you’re OK giving unique names to the thunks run by the theads.