From: Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb@...>
Date: 2005-08-26T22:50:49+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] EventLoop 0.0.20050825.1600

On 8/26/05, Tanaka Akira <akr@m17n.org> wrote:
> In article <033601c5a9fa$26ba7840$6442a8c0@musicbox>,
>   "Bill Kelly" <billk@cts.com> writes:
> 
> > Wow - the main thing holding back progress on this front is
> > method names?  I could embrace connect_nonblock or nbconnect,
> > there.
> 
> Do you have a problem with threads?
> 
> If you use threads, nonblocking methods are not required in general.
> 
> I'd like to know why people doesn't use threads.
> 
> > The blocking I/O issues are the thorniest problem for me
> > writing applications in ruby.  (Of course, it's 1000 times
> > worse on Windows, ... where nonblocking I/O is apparently not
> > supported at all yet.  That is just a nightmare.)
> 
> I heard Windows has nonblocking I/O for sockets.
> 
Windows actually has plenty of support for nonblocking operations on
sockets and files.
Here's an example hit from MSDN:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/ipc/base/named_pipe_type_read_and_wait_modes.asp

The problem is that it doesn't work exactly the way it does on Linux
and BSD, and so "direct port" software like Ruby tends to not have
particularly good support for it.  I believe the ActiveState Perl and
Python distributions give you some good hooks into it, but I've never
really gone to that level with Ruby, so I won't spread any bad
information.

--Wilson.