From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-05-11T05:01:45+09:00
Subject: Re: Slowing threads


On May 10, 2006, at 3:48 PM, Leslie Viljoen wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I have written a program that simulates three "consoles" that accept
> keyboard input and run concurrently. You can type commands which each
> run at different speeds without interfering with other commands. It
> works but it's complex and I think it can be simpler if I have each
> command run in it's own thread - at the moment I don't use threads at
> all.
>
> So I have been creating threads to test and playing with priorities.
> I'd like to be able to control the speed at which processes run but if
> I set a thread to just one priority higher than another, it is
> scheduled tens of thousands of times more often.
>
> So:
>
> 1. What do the priorities actually mean?
> 2. If I have to slow one thread just a little, that means messy
> sleep() commands on every second line. Is there a way I can call just
> parts of a passed-in block?
> ie. can I do something similar to this:
>
> def sleeper(&block)
>        block.each_command do |c|
>              eval(c)
>              sleep(0.5)
>        end
> end
>
> sleeper do
>        puts "one"
>        puts "two"
>        puts "three"
> end
>
> If it's too much magic I'll just intersperse with sleep, just thought
> there might be a better way.
>

If you really want this much fine grained control over the thread  
scheduler it probably means patching ruby itself. OTOH that would  
probably be cool.