From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-11-01T12:28:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Nonblocking IO read

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006, Bjorn Borud wrote:

> [ara.t.howard@noaa.gov]
> |
> | it can't be done.  search the archives, this sort of thing almost
> | always indicates a design flaw.  for instance - what will your
> | program do if there is no input?
>
> nonblocking IO is not a design-flaw; it is something that is in common
> use and is supported by most languages with a decent socket API.  on
> some OS'es this is even available for file IO (although widespread
> language support seems to lag behind).
>
> Java for example got proper nonblocking socket IO in 1.4 (see
> JSR-000051 "New I/O APIs for the JavaTM Platform").

but it's archaic compared to event driven frameworks like

   http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent/
   http://liboop.ofb.net/

in addition it's a hack in the c lib of many oses.

> for examples of use you might want to check out the Reactor pattern
> and other patterns for concurrent programming.

afaik the reactor pattern is a synchronous pattern

   http://www.artima.com/articles/io_design_patterns2.html

not unlike the model of libevent and liboop - which are both synchronous...
am i missing something?

-a
-- 
my religion is very simple.  my religion is kindness. -- the dalai lama