From: Judson Lester <nyarly@...>
Date: 2008-01-26T05:54:01+09:00
Subject: Re: to sleep no more

On Jan 25, 2008 12:19 PM, DrBenway <westworld@pandora.be> wrote:
>
> Wow thnx Stephen for coocking up an example so fast :)
> That's indeed what I was planning to do.
>
> That way I call  snake = Animal.new(5, 10, "egg", "snake") once and
> from then on it leads a life on its own (that's what got me to think
> that I needed threads).

You could do something like:

> > class Animal
> >         def initialize(i_period = 60, m_period = 120, from = "egg", to
> > = "chicken")
> >                 @incubation_period = i_period
> >                 @maturation_period = m_period
> >                 @slept = 0
> >                 @from_type = from
> >                 @to_type = to
> >                 @current_type = @from_type
> >                 @children = []
                      Thread.run do
                          while true do
                             mysleep(1)
                          end
                      end
> >         end

As a start, anyway.  Much better to rejigger the whole thing so that
the thread looks like

Thread.run do
  sleep(incubation_period)
  born
  sleep(maturation_period)
  mature
  sleep(adult_lifetime)
  die
end

Also, it seems pretty obvious that you should do different species as
subclasses of Animal, so that:

class Snake < Animal
  def incubation_period; 5; end

  def maturation_period; 10; end

  def adult_lifetime; 15; end

  def born; @state="snake"; end
  #etc, etc
end

menagerie = []
Snake.new(menagerie)
Deer.new(menagerie)
Fox.new(menagerie)
sleep 6
menagerie.each {|animal| animal.give_birth} => "Snake 1: I had 150
children.  Deer 1: I had 1 child.  Fox 1: I'm too young to reproduce"

Granted, incomplete as it stands, but there's a direction there.

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