C++11 difference between <thread> get_id() and native_handle()

Question

What is the difference between C++11 functions get_id() and native_handle()?

In the test program I created they return the same int value for their threads so I have no idea what the difference is.

I'm using GCC 4.8.1 on Windows.

Answer 1

From this reference:

get_id returns the id of the thread

and

native_handle returns the underlying implementation-defined thread handle

The thread identifier as returned by get_id should actually be a class (std::thread::id) and not a number or other platform specific handle.

The native_handle function returns just what its name implies, a native handle that can be used by the underlying operating systems thread functions. On Windows this is typically a HANDLE as returned by CreateThread, on POSIX platforms it's typically a pthread_t as initialized by pthread_create.