VMS Help POSIX Threads, PTHREAD routines, pthread_getspecific, Description  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    This routine obtains the thread-specific data associated with the
    specified key for the current thread. Obtain this key by calling
    the pthread_key_create() routine. This routine returns the value
    currently bound to the specified key on behalf of the calling
    thread.

    This routine may be called from a thread-specific data destructor
    function.