From: Kevin McConnell <kevin_mcconnell@...>
Date: 2004-10-06T23:59:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Thinking about Threaded IO

Brian Candler wrote:

> IO#read and IO#gets work properly; in other words Ruby wraps the calls
> appropriately to make sure they never block the interpreter engine.

Not sure if any of you use Windows, but it's probably worth pointing out 
that on Windows IO#gets *does* block all threads.

E.g. if I run the following:

   thread = Thread.new { i=0; while(true); puts i+=1; sleep 1; end }
   sleep 10
   str = $stdin.gets
   sleep 10

It should display the numbers 1 to 10, and then go suspiciously quiet 
until you provide the input to gets.  Once you do that, you'll get the 
numbers 11 to 20.

Cheers,
   Kevin