From: Tanaka Akira <akr@...17n.org>
Date: 2004-03-26T06:22:44+09:00
Subject: Re: thread/fork/tk nightmares

In article <Pine.LNX.4.44.0403250804470.6994-100000@fattire.ngdc.noaa.gov>,
  "Ara.T.Howard" <ahoward@fattire.ngdc.noaa.gov> writes:

>     program.each{|stmt| i.puts stmt}
>     i.flush

On Linux, the script blocks at puts.

Try puts in a thread as:

  Thread.new {
    program.each{|stmt| i.puts stmt}
    i.flush
  }

Note that your test script works well on Solaris unlike Linux.

It seems that select(2) behaves differently on Linux and Solaris.
(Since your script uses thread, ruby calls select before a IO
operation implicitly.)

% cat tst    
#!/usr/bin/env ruby

i = IO.popen(<<'End', 'w')
ruby -e 'STDIN.each {|line| sleep 10 }'
End

def time(tag)
  t1 = Time.now
  yield
  t2 = Time.now
  printf "%s: %f\n", tag, t2 - t1
end

6.times {
  time(:select) { IO.select(nil, [i]) }
  time(:puts) { i.puts "s" }
}
time(:flush) { i.flush }

% ruby -v tst
ruby 1.9.0 (2004-03-25) [i686-linux]
select: 0.000042
puts: 0.000031
select: 0.028008
puts: 0.000035
select: 9.990686
puts: 0.000029
select: 9.999802
puts: 0.000029
select: 9.999702
puts: 0.000021
select: 9.999867
puts: 0.000028
flush: 0.000007

% ./ruby -v tst
ruby 1.9.0 (2004-03-25) [sparc-solaris2.8]
select: 0.000161
puts: 0.000074
select: 0.000043
puts: 0.000043
select: 0.000039
puts: 0.000043
select: 0.000066
puts: 0.000043
select: 0.000040
puts: 0.000042
select: 0.000039
puts: 0.000042
flush: 0.000017

On Linux, select waits something - read operation on the other end of the pipe?
-- 
Tanaka Akira