This routine sets the calling thread's cancelability state to the value specified in the state argument and returns the calling thread's previous cancelability state in the location referenced by the oldstate argument. When a thread's cancelability state is set to PTHREAD_CANCEL_ DISABLE, a cancelation request cannot be delivered to the thread, even if a cancelable routine is called or asynchronous cancelability is enabled. When a thread is created, its default cancelability state is PTHREAD_CANCEL_ENABLE. When this routine is called prior to loading threads, the cancelability state propagates to the initial thread in the executing program. Possible Problems When Disabling Cancelability The most important use of a cancelation request is to ensure that indefinite wait operations are terminated. For example, a thread waiting on some network connection, which might take days to respond (or might never respond), should be made cancelable. When a thread's cancelability state is disabled, no routine called within that thread is cancelable. As a result, the user is unable to cancel the operation. When disabling cancelability, be sure that no long waits can occur or that it is necessary for other reasons to defer cancelation requests around that particular region of code.