From: Anders Lindgren <andlind@...>
Date: 2007-03-07T00:40:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Thread reading from a pipe blocks other threads, why?

Thanks for the reply!

> it can't be done using popen and threads with current ruby.  search the
> archives.

Well, I did search the archive, but I didn't get a straight answer on
this. I couldn't imagine that it would be impossible to read data from
more than one source at the same time.

You said "current ruby" -- well, maybe there is hope for the future!

I just noticed that in the weekly newsletter it was announced that
Pragmatic Programmers will publish a book on Erlang. This is a
language I worked on many years ago and I haven't really missed it --
until today, that is. The model it uses for building concurrent
applications is really a winner. In that environment you simply
specify the start function (the "main" of the thread), communication
is typically performed by passing messages. The "fork" paradigm and
shared variables used by Ruby is something that really should be
declared as deprecated, since it really makes the program difficult to
write (not to mention impossible to read).

I cross my fingers that the next major version of Ruby uses a non-toy
concurrent solution.


> this may help
>
>    http://codeforpeople.com/lib/ruby/systemu/systemu-1.0.0/README
>
> gem install systemu

Thanks, I will take a look at it!

    -- Anders Lindgren