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Revision: 1.381
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# User Rev Content
1 root 1.150 =head1 NAME
2 root 1.1
3 root 1.256 AnyEvent - the DBI of event loop programming
4 root 1.2
5 root 1.368 EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Irssi, rxvt-unicode, IO::Async, Qt,
6     FLTK and POE are various supported event loops/environments.
7 root 1.1
8     =head1 SYNOPSIS
9    
10 root 1.7 use AnyEvent;
11 root 1.2
12 root 1.322 # if you prefer function calls, look at the AE manpage for
13 root 1.318 # an alternative API.
14    
15     # file handle or descriptor readable
16 root 1.207 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
17 root 1.173
18 root 1.207 # one-shot or repeating timers
19 root 1.173 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
20 root 1.330 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...);
21 root 1.173
22     print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
23     print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
24    
25 root 1.207 # POSIX signal
26 root 1.173 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
27 root 1.5
28 root 1.207 # child process exit
29 root 1.173 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
30     my ($pid, $status) = @_;
31 root 1.2 ...
32     });
33    
34 root 1.207 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
35     my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
36    
37 root 1.52 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
38 root 1.114 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
39     $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
40 root 1.173 # use a condvar in callback mode:
41     $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
42 root 1.5
43 root 1.148 =head1 INTRODUCTION/TUTORIAL
44    
45     This manpage is mainly a reference manual. If you are interested
46     in a tutorial or some gentle introduction, have a look at the
47     L<AnyEvent::Intro> manpage.
48    
49 root 1.249 =head1 SUPPORT
50    
51 root 1.334 An FAQ document is available as L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
52    
53     There also is a mailinglist for discussing all things AnyEvent, and an IRC
54 root 1.249 channel, too.
55    
56     See the AnyEvent project page at the B<Schmorpforge Ta-Sa Software
57 root 1.255 Repository>, at L<http://anyevent.schmorp.de>, for more info.
58 root 1.249
59 root 1.43 =head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
60 root 1.41
61     Glib, POE, IO::Async, Event... CPAN offers event models by the dozen
62     nowadays. So what is different about AnyEvent?
63    
64     Executive Summary: AnyEvent is I<compatible>, AnyEvent is I<free of
65     policy> and AnyEvent is I<small and efficient>.
66    
67     First and foremost, I<AnyEvent is not an event model> itself, it only
68 root 1.168 interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
69 root 1.41 pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
70 root 1.53 the statement "there can only be one" is a bitter reality: In general,
71     only one event loop can be active at the same time in a process. AnyEvent
72 root 1.168 cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
73     loops.
74 root 1.41
75     The goal of AnyEvent is to offer module authors the ability to do event
76     programming (waiting for I/O or timer events) without subscribing to a
77     religion, a way of living, and most importantly: without forcing your
78     module users into the same thing by forcing them to use the same event
79     model you use.
80    
81 root 1.53 For modules like POE or IO::Async (which is a total misnomer as it is
82     actually doing all I/O I<synchronously>...), using them in your module is
83 root 1.330 like joining a cult: After you join, you are dependent on them and you
84 root 1.168 cannot use anything else, as they are simply incompatible to everything
85     that isn't them. What's worse, all the potential users of your
86     module are I<also> forced to use the same event loop you use.
87 root 1.53
88     AnyEvent is different: AnyEvent + POE works fine. AnyEvent + Glib works
89     fine. AnyEvent + Tk works fine etc. etc. but none of these work together
90 root 1.343 with the rest: POE + EV? No go. Tk + Event? No go. Again: if your module
91     uses one of those, every user of your module has to use it, too. But if
92     your module uses AnyEvent, it works transparently with all event models it
93     supports (including stuff like IO::Async, as long as those use one of the
94     supported event loops. It is easy to add new event loops to AnyEvent, too,
95     so it is future-proof).
96 root 1.41
97 root 1.53 In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
98 root 1.41 model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
99 root 1.128 modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
100 root 1.330 follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and to the point, by only
101 root 1.53 offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
102 root 1.41 technically possible.
103    
104 root 1.142 Of course, AnyEvent comes with a big (and fully optional!) toolbox
105     of useful functionality, such as an asynchronous DNS resolver, 100%
106     non-blocking connects (even with TLS/SSL, IPv6 and on broken platforms
107     such as Windows) and lots of real-world knowledge and workarounds for
108     platform bugs and differences.
109    
110     Now, if you I<do want> lots of policy (this can arguably be somewhat
111 root 1.46 useful) and you want to force your users to use the one and only event
112     model, you should I<not> use this module.
113 root 1.43
114 root 1.1 =head1 DESCRIPTION
115    
116 root 1.330 L<AnyEvent> provides a uniform interface to various event loops. This
117     allows module authors to use event loop functionality without forcing
118     module users to use a specific event loop implementation (since more
119     than one event loop cannot coexist peacefully).
120 root 1.2
121 root 1.53 The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
122 root 1.2 module.
123    
124 root 1.53 During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
125 root 1.61 to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
126 root 1.352 following modules is already loaded: L<EV>, L<AnyEvent::Loop>,
127 root 1.331 L<Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>, L<Qt>, L<POE>. The first one
128     found is used. If none are detected, the module tries to load the first
129     four modules in the order given; but note that if L<EV> is not
130 root 1.352 available, the pure-perl L<AnyEvent::Loop> should always work, so
131 root 1.331 the other two are not normally tried.
132 root 1.14
133     Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
134 root 1.53 an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
135 root 1.14 that model the default. For example:
136    
137     use Tk;
138     use AnyEvent;
139    
140     # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
141    
142 root 1.53 The I<likely> means that, if any module loads another event model and
143 root 1.329 starts using it, all bets are off - this case should be very rare though,
144     as very few modules hardcode event loops without announcing this very
145     loudly.
146 root 1.53
147 root 1.352 The pure-perl implementation of AnyEvent is called C<AnyEvent::Loop>. Like
148     other event modules you can load it explicitly and enjoy the high
149     availability of that event loop :)
150 root 1.14
151     =head1 WATCHERS
152    
153     AnyEvent has the central concept of a I<watcher>, which is an object that
154     stores relevant data for each kind of event you are waiting for, such as
155 root 1.128 the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
156 root 1.14
157     These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
158 root 1.53 creating a watcher it will immediately "watch" for events and invoke the
159     callback when the event occurs (of course, only when the event model
160     is in control).
161    
162 root 1.196 Note that B<callbacks must not permanently change global variables>
163     potentially in use by the event loop (such as C<$_> or C<$[>) and that B<<
164 root 1.330 callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practice in
165 root 1.196 Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
166     widely between event loops.
167    
168 root 1.330 To disable a watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
169 root 1.53 variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
170     to it).
171 root 1.14
172     All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
173    
174 root 1.53 Many watchers either are used with "recursion" (repeating timers for
175     example), or need to refer to their watcher object in other ways.
176    
177 root 1.330 One way to achieve that is this pattern:
178 root 1.53
179 root 1.151 my $w; $w = AnyEvent->type (arg => value ..., cb => sub {
180     # you can use $w here, for example to undef it
181     undef $w;
182     });
183 root 1.53
184     Note that C<my $w; $w => combination. This is necessary because in Perl,
185     my variables are only visible after the statement in which they are
186     declared.
187    
188 root 1.78 =head2 I/O WATCHERS
189 root 1.14
190 root 1.266 $w = AnyEvent->io (
191     fh => <filehandle_or_fileno>,
192     poll => <"r" or "w">,
193     cb => <callback>,
194     );
195    
196 root 1.53 You can create an I/O watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->io >> method
197     with the following mandatory key-value pairs as arguments:
198 root 1.14
199 root 1.229 C<fh> is the Perl I<file handle> (or a naked file descriptor) to watch
200     for events (AnyEvent might or might not keep a reference to this file
201     handle). Note that only file handles pointing to things for which
202 root 1.199 non-blocking operation makes sense are allowed. This includes sockets,
203     most character devices, pipes, fifos and so on, but not for example files
204     or block devices.
205    
206     C<poll> must be a string that is either C<r> or C<w>, which creates a
207     watcher waiting for "r"eadable or "w"ritable events, respectively.
208    
209     C<cb> is the callback to invoke each time the file handle becomes ready.
210 root 1.53
211 root 1.85 Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
212     presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
213     callbacks cannot use arguments passed to I/O watcher callbacks.
214    
215 root 1.82 The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
216 root 1.84 You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
217     underlying file descriptor.
218 root 1.53
219 root 1.330 Some event loops issue spurious readiness notifications, so you should
220 root 1.53 always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
221     handles.
222 root 1.14
223 root 1.164 Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
224     watcher.
225 root 1.14
226     my $w; $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
227     chomp (my $input = <STDIN>);
228     warn "read: $input\n";
229     undef $w;
230     });
231    
232 root 1.19 =head2 TIME WATCHERS
233 root 1.14
234 root 1.266 $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => <seconds>, cb => <callback>);
235    
236     $w = AnyEvent->timer (
237     after => <fractional_seconds>,
238     interval => <fractional_seconds>,
239     cb => <callback>,
240     );
241    
242 root 1.19 You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
243 root 1.14 method with the following mandatory arguments:
244    
245 root 1.53 C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
246 root 1.85 supported) the callback should be invoked. C<cb> is the callback to invoke
247     in that case.
248    
249     Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
250     presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
251     callbacks cannot use arguments passed to time watcher callbacks.
252 root 1.14
253 root 1.330 The callback will normally be invoked only once. If you specify another
254 root 1.165 parameter, C<interval>, as a strictly positive number (> 0), then the
255     callback will be invoked regularly at that interval (in fractional
256     seconds) after the first invocation. If C<interval> is specified with a
257 root 1.330 false value, then it is treated as if it were not specified at all.
258 root 1.164
259     The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
260 root 1.330 attempt is made to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
261 root 1.164 only approximate.
262 root 1.14
263 root 1.164 Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
264 root 1.14
265     my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
266     warn "timeout\n";
267     });
268    
269     # to cancel the timer:
270 root 1.37 undef $w;
271 root 1.14
272 root 1.164 Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
273 root 1.53
274 root 1.164 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
275     warn "timeout\n";
276 root 1.53 };
277    
278     =head3 TIMING ISSUES
279    
280     There are two ways to handle timers: based on real time (relative, "fire
281     in 10 seconds") and based on wallclock time (absolute, "fire at 12
282     o'clock").
283    
284 root 1.58 While most event loops expect timers to specified in a relative way, they
285     use absolute time internally. This makes a difference when your clock
286     "jumps", for example, when ntp decides to set your clock backwards from
287     the wrong date of 2014-01-01 to 2008-01-01, a watcher that is supposed to
288 root 1.330 fire "after a second" might actually take six years to finally fire.
289 root 1.53
290     AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
291 root 1.330 of these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
292 root 1.58 on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
293     timers.
294 root 1.53
295     AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
296     AnyEvent API.
297    
298 root 1.143 AnyEvent has two additional methods that return the "current time":
299    
300     =over 4
301    
302     =item AnyEvent->time
303    
304     This returns the "current wallclock time" as a fractional number of
305     seconds since the Epoch (the same thing as C<time> or C<Time::HiRes::time>
306     return, and the result is guaranteed to be compatible with those).
307    
308 root 1.144 It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
309     will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
310 root 1.143
311     =item AnyEvent->now
312    
313     This also returns the "current wallclock time", but unlike C<time>, above,
314     this value might change only once per event loop iteration, depending on
315     the event loop (most return the same time as C<time>, above). This is the
316 root 1.144 time that AnyEvent's timers get scheduled against.
317    
318     I<In almost all cases (in all cases if you don't care), this is the
319     function to call when you want to know the current time.>
320    
321     This function is also often faster then C<< AnyEvent->time >>, and
322     thus the preferred method if you want some timestamp (for example,
323 root 1.330 L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update its activity timeouts).
324 root 1.144
325     The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
326 root 1.330 with your timing; you can skip it without a bad conscience.
327 root 1.143
328     For a practical example of when these times differ, consider L<Event::Lib>
329     and L<EV> and the following set-up:
330    
331 root 1.330 The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callbacks at
332 root 1.143 time=500 (assume no other callbacks delay processing). In your callback,
333     you wait a second by executing C<sleep 1> (blocking the process for a
334     second) and then (at time=501) you create a relative timer that fires
335     after three seconds.
336    
337     With L<Event::Lib>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> will
338     both return C<501>, because that is the current time, and the timer will
339     be scheduled to fire at time=504 (C<501> + C<3>).
340    
341 root 1.144 With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
342 root 1.143 time), but C<< AnyEvent->now >> returns C<500>, as that is the time the
343     last event processing phase started. With L<EV>, your timer gets scheduled
344     to run at time=503 (C<500> + C<3>).
345    
346     In one sense, L<Event::Lib> is more exact, as it uses the current time
347     regardless of any delays introduced by event processing. However, most
348     callbacks do not expect large delays in processing, so this causes a
349 root 1.144 higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
350 root 1.143
351     In another sense, L<EV> is more exact, as your timer will be scheduled at
352     the same time, regardless of how long event processing actually took.
353    
354     In either case, if you care (and in most cases, you don't), then you
355     can get whatever behaviour you want with any event loop, by taking the
356     difference between C<< AnyEvent->time >> and C<< AnyEvent->now >> into
357     account.
358    
359 root 1.205 =item AnyEvent->now_update
360    
361 root 1.352 Some event loops (such as L<EV> or L<AnyEvent::Loop>) cache the current
362     time for each loop iteration (see the discussion of L<< AnyEvent->now >>,
363     above).
364 root 1.205
365     When a callback runs for a long time (or when the process sleeps), then
366     this "current" time will differ substantially from the real time, which
367     might affect timers and time-outs.
368    
369     When this is the case, you can call this method, which will update the
370     event loop's idea of "current time".
371    
372 root 1.296 A typical example would be a script in a web server (e.g. C<mod_perl>) -
373     when mod_perl executes the script, then the event loop will have the wrong
374     idea about the "current time" (being potentially far in the past, when the
375     script ran the last time). In that case you should arrange a call to C<<
376     AnyEvent->now_update >> each time the web server process wakes up again
377     (e.g. at the start of your script, or in a handler).
378    
379 root 1.205 Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
380    
381 root 1.143 =back
382    
383 root 1.53 =head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
384 root 1.14
385 root 1.266 $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => <uppercase_signal_name>, cb => <callback>);
386    
387 root 1.53 You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
388 root 1.167 I<name> in uppercase and without any C<SIG> prefix, C<cb> is the Perl
389     callback to be invoked whenever a signal occurs.
390 root 1.53
391 root 1.85 Although the callback might get passed parameters, their value and
392     presence is undefined and you cannot rely on them. Portable AnyEvent
393     callbacks cannot use arguments passed to signal watcher callbacks.
394    
395 elmex 1.129 Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
396     invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
397 root 1.53 that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
398 elmex 1.129 but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
399 root 1.53
400     The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
401 root 1.242 between multiple watchers, and AnyEvent will ensure that signals will not
402     interrupt your program at bad times.
403 root 1.53
404 root 1.242 This watcher might use C<%SIG> (depending on the event loop used),
405     so programs overwriting those signals directly will likely not work
406     correctly.
407    
408 root 1.247 Example: exit on SIGINT
409    
410     my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
411    
412 root 1.298 =head3 Restart Behaviour
413    
414     While restart behaviour is up to the event loop implementation, most will
415     not restart syscalls (that includes L<Async::Interrupt> and AnyEvent's
416     pure perl implementation).
417    
418     =head3 Safe/Unsafe Signals
419    
420     Perl signals can be either "safe" (synchronous to opcode handling) or
421     "unsafe" (asynchronous) - the former might get delayed indefinitely, the
422     latter might corrupt your memory.
423    
424     AnyEvent signal handlers are, in addition, synchronous to the event loop,
425     i.e. they will not interrupt your running perl program but will only be
426     called as part of the normal event handling (just like timer, I/O etc.
427     callbacks, too).
428    
429 root 1.247 =head3 Signal Races, Delays and Workarounds
430    
431     Many event loops (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt, IO::Async) do not support attaching
432 root 1.267 callbacks to signals in a generic way, which is a pity, as you cannot
433     do race-free signal handling in perl, requiring C libraries for
434 root 1.330 this. AnyEvent will try to do its best, which means in some cases,
435 root 1.267 signals will be delayed. The maximum time a signal might be delayed is
436     specified in C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY> (default: 10 seconds). This
437     variable can be changed only before the first signal watcher is created,
438     and should be left alone otherwise. This variable determines how often
439     AnyEvent polls for signals (in case a wake-up was missed). Higher values
440 root 1.242 will cause fewer spurious wake-ups, which is better for power and CPU
441 root 1.267 saving.
442    
443     All these problems can be avoided by installing the optional
444     L<Async::Interrupt> module, which works with most event loops. It will not
445     work with inherently broken event loops such as L<Event> or L<Event::Lib>
446 root 1.330 (and not with L<POE> currently, as POE does its own workaround with
447 root 1.267 one-second latency). For those, you just have to suffer the delays.
448 root 1.53
449     =head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
450    
451 root 1.266 $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => <process id>, cb => <callback>);
452    
453 root 1.330 You can also watch for a child process exit and catch its exit status.
454 root 1.53
455 root 1.330 The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (on some backends,
456 root 1.254 using C<0> watches for any child process exit, on others this will
457     croak). The watcher will be triggered only when the child process has
458     finished and an exit status is available, not on any trace events
459     (stopped/continued).
460 root 1.181
461     The callback will be called with the pid and exit status (as returned by
462     waitpid), so unlike other watcher types, you I<can> rely on child watcher
463     callback arguments.
464    
465     This watcher type works by installing a signal handler for C<SIGCHLD>,
466     and since it cannot be shared, nothing else should use SIGCHLD or reap
467     random child processes (waiting for specific child processes, e.g. inside
468     C<system>, is just fine).
469 root 1.53
470 root 1.82 There is a slight catch to child watchers, however: you usually start them
471     I<after> the child process was created, and this means the process could
472     have exited already (and no SIGCHLD will be sent anymore).
473    
474 root 1.219 Not all event models handle this correctly (neither POE nor IO::Async do,
475     see their AnyEvent::Impl manpages for details), but even for event models
476     that I<do> handle this correctly, they usually need to be loaded before
477     the process exits (i.e. before you fork in the first place). AnyEvent's
478     pure perl event loop handles all cases correctly regardless of when you
479     start the watcher.
480    
481     This means you cannot create a child watcher as the very first
482     thing in an AnyEvent program, you I<have> to create at least one
483     watcher before you C<fork> the child (alternatively, you can call
484     C<AnyEvent::detect>).
485 root 1.82
486 root 1.242 As most event loops do not support waiting for child events, they will be
487 root 1.351 emulated by AnyEvent in most cases, in which case the latency and race
488     problems mentioned in the description of signal watchers apply.
489 root 1.242
490 root 1.82 Example: fork a process and wait for it
491    
492 root 1.151 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
493    
494     my $pid = fork or exit 5;
495    
496     my $w = AnyEvent->child (
497     pid => $pid,
498     cb => sub {
499     my ($pid, $status) = @_;
500     warn "pid $pid exited with status $status";
501     $done->send;
502     },
503     );
504    
505     # do something else, then wait for process exit
506     $done->recv;
507 root 1.82
508 root 1.207 =head2 IDLE WATCHERS
509    
510 root 1.266 $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => <callback>);
511    
512 root 1.330 This will repeatedly invoke the callback after the process becomes idle,
513     until either the watcher is destroyed or new events have been detected.
514 root 1.207
515 root 1.309 Idle watchers are useful when there is a need to do something, but it
516     is not so important (or wise) to do it instantly. The callback will be
517     invoked only when there is "nothing better to do", which is usually
518     defined as "all outstanding events have been handled and no new events
519     have been detected". That means that idle watchers ideally get invoked
520     when the event loop has just polled for new events but none have been
521     detected. Instead of blocking to wait for more events, the idle watchers
522     will be invoked.
523    
524     Unfortunately, most event loops do not really support idle watchers (only
525 root 1.207 EV, Event and Glib do it in a usable fashion) - for the rest, AnyEvent
526     will simply call the callback "from time to time".
527    
528     Example: read lines from STDIN, but only process them when the
529     program is otherwise idle:
530    
531     my @lines; # read data
532     my $idle_w;
533     my $io_w = AnyEvent->io (fh => \*STDIN, poll => 'r', cb => sub {
534     push @lines, scalar <STDIN>;
535    
536     # start an idle watcher, if not already done
537     $idle_w ||= AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub {
538     # handle only one line, when there are lines left
539     if (my $line = shift @lines) {
540     print "handled when idle: $line";
541     } else {
542     # otherwise disable the idle watcher again
543     undef $idle_w;
544     }
545     });
546     });
547    
548 root 1.53 =head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
549    
550 root 1.266 $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
551    
552     $cv->send (<list>);
553     my @res = $cv->recv;
554    
555 root 1.105 If you are familiar with some event loops you will know that all of them
556     require you to run some blocking "loop", "run" or similar function that
557     will actively watch for new events and call your callbacks.
558    
559 root 1.239 AnyEvent is slightly different: it expects somebody else to run the event
560     loop and will only block when necessary (usually when told by the user).
561 root 1.105
562 root 1.326 The tool to do that is called a "condition variable", so called because
563     they represent a condition that must become true.
564 root 1.105
565 root 1.239 Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
566    
567 root 1.105 Condition variables can be created by calling the C<< AnyEvent->condvar
568     >> method, usually without arguments. The only argument pair allowed is
569     C<cb>, which specifies a callback to be called when the condition variable
570 root 1.173 becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
571     the results).
572 root 1.105
573 elmex 1.129 After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
574 root 1.131 by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
575 root 1.135 were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
576     ->send >> method).
577 root 1.105
578 root 1.326 Since condition variables are the most complex part of the AnyEvent API, here are
579     some different mental models of what they are - pick the ones you can connect to:
580    
581     =over 4
582    
583     =item * Condition variables are like callbacks - you can call them (and pass them instead
584     of callbacks). Unlike callbacks however, you can also wait for them to be called.
585    
586     =item * Condition variables are signals - one side can emit or send them,
587     the other side can wait for them, or install a handler that is called when
588     the signal fires.
589    
590     =item * Condition variables are like "Merge Points" - points in your program
591     where you merge multiple independent results/control flows into one.
592    
593 root 1.330 =item * Condition variables represent a transaction - functions that start
594 root 1.326 some kind of transaction can return them, leaving the caller the choice
595     between waiting in a blocking fashion, or setting a callback.
596    
597     =item * Condition variables represent future values, or promises to deliver
598     some result, long before the result is available.
599    
600     =back
601 root 1.14
602 root 1.105 Condition variables are very useful to signal that something has finished,
603     for example, if you write a module that does asynchronous http requests,
604 root 1.53 then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
605 root 1.105 availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
606 root 1.114 called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
607 root 1.53
608 root 1.105 You can also use them to simulate traditional event loops - for example,
609     you can block your main program until an event occurs - for example, you
610 root 1.114 could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
611 root 1.106 button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
612 root 1.53
613     Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
614 elmex 1.129 two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
615 root 1.53 lose. Therefore, condition variables are good to export to your caller, but
616     you should avoid making a blocking wait yourself, at least in callbacks,
617     as this asks for trouble.
618 root 1.41
619 root 1.105 Condition variables are represented by hash refs in perl, and the keys
620     used by AnyEvent itself are all named C<_ae_XXX> to make subclassing
621     easy (it is often useful to build your own transaction class on top of
622     AnyEvent). To subclass, use C<AnyEvent::CondVar> as base class and call
623 root 1.330 its C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
624 root 1.105
625     There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
626 root 1.106 eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
627     for the send to occur.
628 root 1.105
629 root 1.131 Example: wait for a timer.
630 root 1.105
631 root 1.319 # condition: "wait till the timer is fired"
632     my $timer_fired = AnyEvent->condvar;
633 root 1.105
634 root 1.319 # create the timer - we could wait for, say
635     # a handle becomign ready, or even an
636     # AnyEvent::HTTP request to finish, but
637 root 1.105 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
638     my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
639     after => 1,
640 root 1.319 cb => sub { $timer_fired->send },
641 root 1.105 );
642    
643     # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
644 root 1.285 # calls ->send
645 root 1.319 $timer_fired->recv;
646 root 1.105
647 root 1.239 Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
648     variables are also callable directly.
649 root 1.131
650     my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
651     my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
652     $done->recv;
653    
654 root 1.173 Example: Imagine an API that returns a condvar and doesn't support
655     callbacks. This is how you make a synchronous call, for example from
656     the main program:
657    
658     use AnyEvent::CouchDB;
659    
660     ...
661    
662     my @info = $couchdb->info->recv;
663    
664 root 1.239 And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
665 root 1.173 results are available:
666    
667     $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
668     my @info = $_[0]->recv;
669     });
670    
671 root 1.105 =head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
672    
673     These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
674 root 1.106 code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
675 root 1.105 the producer side which creates the condvar in most cases, but it isn't
676     uncommon for the consumer to create it as well.
677 root 1.2
678 root 1.1 =over 4
679    
680 root 1.106 =item $cv->send (...)
681 root 1.105
682 root 1.114 Flag the condition as ready - a running C<< ->recv >> and all further
683     calls to C<recv> will (eventually) return after this method has been
684 root 1.106 called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
685 root 1.105
686     If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
687 root 1.106 immediately from within send.
688 root 1.105
689 root 1.106 Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
690 root 1.114 future C<< ->recv >> calls.
691 root 1.105
692 root 1.239 Condition variables are overloaded so one can call them directly (as if
693     they were a code reference). Calling them directly is the same as calling
694     C<send>.
695 root 1.131
696 root 1.105 =item $cv->croak ($error)
697    
698 root 1.330 Similar to send, but causes all calls to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
699 root 1.105 C<Carp::croak> with the given error message/object/scalar.
700    
701     This can be used to signal any errors to the condition variable
702 root 1.239 user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling C<croak> directly
703 root 1.330 delays the error detection, but has the overwhelming advantage that it
704 root 1.239 diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected, and not
705 root 1.330 deep in some event callback with no connection to the actual code causing
706 root 1.239 the problem.
707 root 1.105
708     =item $cv->begin ([group callback])
709    
710     =item $cv->end
711    
712     These two methods can be used to combine many transactions/events into
713     one. For example, a function that pings many hosts in parallel might want
714     to use a condition variable for the whole process.
715    
716     Every call to C<< ->begin >> will increment a counter, and every call to
717     C<< ->end >> will decrement it. If the counter reaches C<0> in C<< ->end
718 root 1.280 >>, the (last) callback passed to C<begin> will be executed, passing the
719     condvar as first argument. That callback is I<supposed> to call C<< ->send
720     >>, but that is not required. If no group callback was set, C<send> will
721     be called without any arguments.
722 root 1.105
723 root 1.222 You can think of C<< $cv->send >> giving you an OR condition (one call
724     sends), while C<< $cv->begin >> and C<< $cv->end >> giving you an AND
725     condition (all C<begin> calls must be C<end>'ed before the condvar sends).
726    
727     Let's start with a simple example: you have two I/O watchers (for example,
728     STDOUT and STDERR for a program), and you want to wait for both streams to
729     close before activating a condvar:
730    
731     my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
732    
733     $cv->begin; # first watcher
734     my $w1 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh1, cb => sub {
735     defined sysread $fh1, my $buf, 4096
736     or $cv->end;
737     });
738    
739     $cv->begin; # second watcher
740     my $w2 = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh2, cb => sub {
741     defined sysread $fh2, my $buf, 4096
742     or $cv->end;
743     });
744    
745     $cv->recv;
746    
747     This works because for every event source (EOF on file handle), there is
748     one call to C<begin>, so the condvar waits for all calls to C<end> before
749     sending.
750    
751     The ping example mentioned above is slightly more complicated, as the
752     there are results to be passwd back, and the number of tasks that are
753 root 1.330 begun can potentially be zero:
754 root 1.105
755     my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
756    
757     my %result;
758 root 1.280 $cv->begin (sub { shift->send (\%result) });
759 root 1.105
760     for my $host (@list_of_hosts) {
761     $cv->begin;
762     ping_host_then_call_callback $host, sub {
763     $result{$host} = ...;
764     $cv->end;
765     };
766     }
767    
768     $cv->end;
769    
770     This code fragment supposedly pings a number of hosts and calls
771 root 1.106 C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
772 root 1.105 order. To achieve this, the code issues a call to C<begin> when it starts
773     each ping request and calls C<end> when it has received some result for
774     it. Since C<begin> and C<end> only maintain a counter, the order in which
775     results arrive is not relevant.
776    
777     There is an additional bracketing call to C<begin> and C<end> outside the
778     loop, which serves two important purposes: first, it sets the callback
779     to be called once the counter reaches C<0>, and second, it ensures that
780 root 1.106 C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
781 root 1.105 doesn't execute once).
782    
783 root 1.222 This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
784 root 1.330 potentially zero) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
785 root 1.222 the callback and ensure C<end> is called at least once, and then, for each
786     subrequest you start, call C<begin> and for each subrequest you finish,
787     call C<end>.
788 root 1.105
789     =back
790    
791     =head3 METHODS FOR CONSUMERS
792    
793     These methods should only be used by the consuming side, i.e. the
794     code awaits the condition.
795    
796 root 1.106 =over 4
797    
798 root 1.114 =item $cv->recv
799 root 1.14
800 root 1.106 Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
801 root 1.330 >> methods have been called on C<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
802 root 1.105 normally.
803    
804     You can only wait once on a condition - additional calls are valid but
805     will return immediately.
806    
807     If an error condition has been set by calling C<< ->croak >>, then this
808     function will call C<croak>.
809 root 1.14
810 root 1.106 In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
811 root 1.105 in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
812 root 1.14
813 root 1.239 Note that doing a blocking wait in a callback is not supported by any
814     event loop, that is, recursive invocation of a blocking C<< ->recv
815     >> is not allowed, and the C<recv> call will C<croak> if such a
816     condition is detected. This condition can be slightly loosened by using
817     L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you to do a blocking C<< ->recv >> from
818     any thread that doesn't run the event loop itself.
819    
820 root 1.47 Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
821 root 1.53 (programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
822 root 1.239 using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>. Instead, let the
823 root 1.52 caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
824 root 1.47 condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
825     callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
826 elmex 1.129 while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
827 root 1.47
828 root 1.330 You can ensure that C<< ->recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
829 root 1.114 only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
830 root 1.105 time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
831     waits otherwise.
832 root 1.53
833 root 1.106 =item $bool = $cv->ready
834    
835     Returns true when the condition is "true", i.e. whether C<send> or
836     C<croak> have been called.
837    
838 root 1.173 =item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
839 root 1.106
840     This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
841     replaces it before doing so.
842    
843 root 1.330 The callback will be called when the condition becomes "true", i.e. when
844     C<send> or C<croak> are called, with the only argument being the
845     condition variable itself. If the condition is already true, the
846     callback is called immediately when it is set. Calling C<recv> inside
847     the callback or at any later time is guaranteed not to block.
848 root 1.106
849 root 1.53 =back
850 root 1.14
851 root 1.232 =head1 SUPPORTED EVENT LOOPS/BACKENDS
852    
853     The available backend classes are (every class has its own manpage):
854    
855     =over 4
856    
857     =item Backends that are autoprobed when no other event loop can be found.
858    
859     EV is the preferred backend when no other event loop seems to be in
860 root 1.276 use. If EV is not installed, then AnyEvent will fall back to its own
861     pure-perl implementation, which is available everywhere as it comes with
862     AnyEvent itself.
863 root 1.232
864     AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
865 root 1.352 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl AnyEvent::Loop, fast and portable.
866 root 1.232
867     =item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
868    
869 root 1.330 These will be used if they are already loaded when the first watcher
870 root 1.232 is created, in which case it is assumed that the application is using
871     them. This means that AnyEvent will automatically pick the right backend
872     when the main program loads an event module before anything starts to
873     create watchers. Nothing special needs to be done by the main program.
874    
875 root 1.276 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
876 root 1.232 AnyEvent::Impl::Glib based on Glib, slow but very stable.
877     AnyEvent::Impl::Tk based on Tk, very broken.
878     AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib based on Event::Lib, leaks memory and worse.
879     AnyEvent::Impl::POE based on POE, very slow, some limitations.
880 root 1.254 AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi used when running within irssi.
881 root 1.342 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async.
882 root 1.344 AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa based on Cocoa::EventLoop.
883 root 1.378 AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK based on FLTK (fltk 2 binding).
884 root 1.232
885     =item Backends with special needs.
886    
887     Qt requires the Qt::Application to be instantiated first, but will
888     otherwise be picked up automatically. As long as the main program
889     instantiates the application before any AnyEvent watchers are created,
890     everything should just work.
891    
892     AnyEvent::Impl::Qt based on Qt.
893    
894     =item Event loops that are indirectly supported via other backends.
895    
896     Some event loops can be supported via other modules:
897    
898     There is no direct support for WxWidgets (L<Wx>) or L<Prima>.
899    
900     B<WxWidgets> has no support for watching file handles. However, you can
901     use WxWidgets through the POE adaptor, as POE has a Wx backend that simply
902     polls 20 times per second, which was considered to be too horrible to even
903     consider for AnyEvent.
904    
905     B<Prima> is not supported as nobody seems to be using it, but it has a POE
906     backend, so it can be supported through POE.
907    
908     AnyEvent knows about both L<Prima> and L<Wx>, however, and will try to
909     load L<POE> when detecting them, in the hope that POE will pick them up,
910     in which case everything will be automatic.
911    
912     =back
913    
914 root 1.53 =head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
915 root 1.16
916 root 1.233 These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
917     write AnyEvent extension modules.
918    
919 root 1.16 =over 4
920    
921     =item $AnyEvent::MODEL
922    
923 root 1.233 Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
924     backend has been autodetected.
925    
926     Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
927     name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
928 root 1.330 of the C<AnyEvent::Impl::xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
929 root 1.233 case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
930     will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
931 root 1.16
932 root 1.19 =item AnyEvent::detect
933    
934 root 1.53 Returns C<$AnyEvent::MODEL>, forcing autodetection of the event model
935     if necessary. You should only call this function right before you would
936     have created an AnyEvent watcher anyway, that is, as late as possible at
937 root 1.330 runtime, and not e.g. during initialisation of your module.
938 root 1.233
939 root 1.359 The effect of calling this function is as if a watcher had been created
940     (specifically, actions that happen "when the first watcher is created"
941     happen when calling detetc as well).
942    
943 root 1.233 If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
944     created, use C<post_detect>.
945 root 1.19
946 root 1.111 =item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
947 root 1.109
948     Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
949 root 1.330 autodetected (or immediately if that has already happened).
950 root 1.109
951 root 1.233 The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
952     (C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> is set), but I<before> any watchers have been
953     created, so it is possible to e.g. patch C<@AnyEvent::ISA> or do
954     other initialisations - see the sources of L<AnyEvent::Strict> or
955     L<AnyEvent::AIO> to see how this is used.
956    
957     The most common usage is to create some global watchers, without forcing
958     event module detection too early, for example, L<AnyEvent::AIO> creates
959     and installs the global L<IO::AIO> watcher in a C<post_detect> block to
960     avoid autodetecting the event module at load time.
961    
962 root 1.110 If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
963 root 1.252 that automatically removes the callback again when it is destroyed (or
964     C<undef> when the hook was immediately executed). See L<AnyEvent::AIO> for
965     a case where this is useful.
966    
967     Example: Create a watcher for the IO::AIO module and store it in
968 root 1.330 C<$WATCHER>, but do so only do so after the event loop is initialised.
969 root 1.252
970     our WATCHER;
971    
972     my $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect {
973     $WATCHER = AnyEvent->io (fh => IO::AIO::poll_fileno, poll => 'r', cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
974     };
975    
976     # the ||= is important in case post_detect immediately runs the block,
977     # as to not clobber the newly-created watcher. assigning both watcher and
978     # post_detect guard to the same variable has the advantage of users being
979     # able to just C<undef $WATCHER> if the watcher causes them grief.
980    
981     $WATCHER ||= $guard;
982 root 1.110
983 root 1.111 =item @AnyEvent::post_detect
984 root 1.108
985     If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
986 root 1.330 before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will be called directly
987     after the event loop has been chosen.
988 root 1.108
989     You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
990 root 1.233 if it is defined then the event loop has already been detected, and the
991     array will be ignored.
992    
993     Best use C<AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }> when your application allows
994 root 1.304 it, as it takes care of these details.
995 root 1.108
996 root 1.233 This variable is mainly useful for modules that can do something useful
997     when AnyEvent is used and thus want to know when it is initialised, but do
998     not need to even load it by default. This array provides the means to hook
999     into AnyEvent passively, without loading it.
1000 root 1.109
1001 root 1.304 Example: To load Coro::AnyEvent whenever Coro and AnyEvent are used
1002     together, you could put this into Coro (this is the actual code used by
1003     Coro to accomplish this):
1004    
1005     if (defined $AnyEvent::MODEL) {
1006     # AnyEvent already initialised, so load Coro::AnyEvent
1007     require Coro::AnyEvent;
1008     } else {
1009     # AnyEvent not yet initialised, so make sure to load Coro::AnyEvent
1010     # as soon as it is
1011     push @AnyEvent::post_detect, sub { require Coro::AnyEvent };
1012     }
1013    
1014 root 1.354 =item AnyEvent::postpone { BLOCK }
1015 root 1.353
1016     Arranges for the block to be executed as soon as possible, but not before
1017     the call itself returns. In practise, the block will be executed just
1018     before the event loop polls for new events, or shortly afterwards.
1019    
1020     This function never returns anything (to make the C<return postpone { ...
1021     }> idiom more useful.
1022    
1023     To understand the usefulness of this function, consider a function that
1024     asynchronously does something for you and returns some transaction
1025     object or guard to let you cancel the operation. For example,
1026     C<AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect>:
1027    
1028     # start a conenction attempt unless one is active
1029     $self->{connect_guard} ||= AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect "www.example.net", 80, sub {
1030     delete $self->{connect_guard};
1031     ...
1032     };
1033    
1034     Imagine that this function could instantly call the callback, for
1035     example, because it detects an obvious error such as a negative port
1036     number. Invoking the callback before the function returns causes problems
1037     however: the callback will be called and will try to delete the guard
1038     object. But since the function hasn't returned yet, there is nothing to
1039     delete. When the function eventually returns it will assign the guard
1040     object to C<< $self->{connect_guard} >>, where it will likely never be
1041     deleted, so the program thinks it is still trying to connect.
1042    
1043     This is where C<AnyEvent::postpone> should be used. Instead of calling the
1044     callback directly on error:
1045    
1046     $cb->(undef), return # signal error to callback, BAD!
1047     if $some_error_condition;
1048    
1049     It should use C<postpone>:
1050    
1051     AnyEvent::postpone { $cb->(undef) }, return # signal error to callback, later
1052     if $some_error_condition;
1053    
1054 root 1.365 =item AnyEvent::log $level, $msg[, @args]
1055    
1056     Log the given C<$msg> at the given C<$level>.
1057    
1058 root 1.376 If L<AnyEvent::Log> is not loaded then this function makes a simple test
1059     to see whether the message will be logged. If the test succeeds it will
1060     load AnyEvent::Log and call C<AnyEvent::Log::log> - consequently, look at
1061     the L<AnyEvent::Log> documentation for details.
1062    
1063 root 1.380 If the test fails it will simply return. Right now this happens when a
1064     numerical loglevel is used and it is larger than the level specified via
1065     C<$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}>.
1066 root 1.365
1067 root 1.367 If you want to sprinkle loads of logging calls around your code, consider
1068 root 1.376 creating a logger callback with the C<AnyEvent::Log::logger> function,
1069     which can reduce typing, codesize and can reduce the logging overhead
1070     enourmously.
1071 root 1.367
1072 root 1.16 =back
1073    
1074 root 1.14 =head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
1075    
1076 root 1.53 As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
1077 root 1.14 freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
1078    
1079 root 1.53 Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
1080 root 1.14 decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
1081     by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
1082     to load the event module first.
1083    
1084 root 1.114 Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
1085 root 1.106 the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
1086 root 1.53 because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
1087     events is to stay interactive.
1088    
1089 root 1.114 It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
1090 root 1.53 requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
1091 root 1.330 called C<results> that returns the results, it may call C<< ->recv >>
1092     freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. Always).
1093 root 1.53
1094 root 1.14 =head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
1095    
1096     There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
1097     dictate which event model to use.
1098    
1099 root 1.330 If the program is not event-based, it need not do anything special, even
1100     when it depends on a module that uses an AnyEvent. If the program itself
1101     uses AnyEvent, but does not care which event loop is used, all it needs
1102     to do is C<use AnyEvent>. In either case, AnyEvent will choose the best
1103     available loop implementation.
1104 root 1.14
1105 root 1.134 If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
1106     Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
1107 root 1.53 event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
1108     speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
1109     modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
1110     decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
1111 root 1.330 might choose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
1112 root 1.14
1113 root 1.134 You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
1114 root 1.352 C<AnyEvent::Loop> module, which gives you similar behaviour
1115 root 1.134 everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
1116    
1117     =head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
1118    
1119     Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
1120     only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
1121    
1122     In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
1123    
1124     AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
1125    
1126     This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
1127    
1128     Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
1129     it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
1130     variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
1131     exit cleanly.
1132    
1133 root 1.14
1134 elmex 1.100 =head1 OTHER MODULES
1135    
1136 root 1.101 The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
1137 root 1.368 AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other
1138     AnyEvent modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the
1139     modules come as part of AnyEvent, the others are available via CPAN (see
1140 root 1.369 L<http://search.cpan.org/search?m=module&q=anyevent%3A%3A*> for
1141 root 1.368 a longer non-exhaustive list), and the list is heavily biased towards
1142     modules of the AnyEvent author himself :)
1143 root 1.101
1144     =over 4
1145    
1146     =item L<AnyEvent::Util>
1147    
1148 root 1.330 Contains various utility functions that replace often-used blocking
1149     functions such as C<inet_aton> with event/callback-based versions.
1150 root 1.101
1151 root 1.125 =item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
1152    
1153     Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
1154     addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
1155     connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
1156    
1157 root 1.164 =item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
1158    
1159     Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
1160     supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
1161 root 1.330 non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>).
1162 root 1.164
1163 root 1.134 =item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
1164    
1165     Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
1166    
1167 root 1.323 =item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>, L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IGS>, L<AnyEvent::FCP>
1168 root 1.155
1169 root 1.323 Implement event-based interfaces to the protocols of the same name (for
1170     the curious, IGS is the International Go Server and FCP is the Freenet
1171     Client Protocol).
1172    
1173 root 1.377 =item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
1174 root 1.323
1175 root 1.377 Truly asynchronous (as opposed to non-blocking) I/O, should be in the
1176     toolbox of every event programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses
1177     L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent together, giving AnyEvent access to event-based
1178     file I/O, and much more.
1179 root 1.323
1180 root 1.377 =item L<AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify>
1181    
1182     AnyEvent is good for non-blocking stuff, but it can't detect file or
1183     path changes (e.g. "watch this directory for new files", "watch this
1184     file for changes"). The L<AnyEvent::Filesys::Notify> module promises to
1185     do just that in a portbale fashion, supporting inotify on GNU/Linux and
1186     some weird, without doubt broken, stuff on OS X to monitor files. It can
1187     fall back to blocking scans at regular intervals transparently on other
1188     platforms, so it's about as portable as it gets.
1189    
1190     (I haven't used it myself, but I haven't heard anybody complaining about
1191     it yet).
1192 root 1.101
1193 root 1.159 =item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
1194    
1195 root 1.323 Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process for you,
1196 root 1.330 notifying you in an event-based way when the operation is finished.
1197 root 1.164
1198 root 1.323 =item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
1199 root 1.164
1200 root 1.323 A simple embedded webserver.
1201 root 1.164
1202 root 1.323 =item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
1203 root 1.164
1204 root 1.323 The fastest ping in the west.
1205 root 1.101
1206     =item L<Coro>
1207    
1208 root 1.377 Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>, which allows you
1209     to simply invert the flow control - don't call us, we will call you:
1210    
1211     async {
1212     Coro::AnyEvent::sleep 5; # creates a 5s timer and waits for it
1213     print "5 seconds later!\n";
1214    
1215     Coro::AnyEvent::readable *STDIN; # uses an I/O watcher
1216     my $line = <STDIN>; # works for ttys
1217    
1218     AnyEvent::HTTP::http_get "url", Coro::rouse_cb;
1219     my ($body, $hdr) = Coro::rouse_wait;
1220     };
1221 root 1.101
1222 elmex 1.100 =back
1223    
1224 root 1.1 =cut
1225    
1226     package AnyEvent;
1227    
1228 root 1.243 # basically a tuned-down version of common::sense
1229     sub common_sense {
1230 root 1.346 # from common:.sense 3.4
1231     ${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS} ^ "\x3c\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf0\x0f\xc0\xf0\xfc\x33\x00";
1232 root 1.306 # use strict vars subs - NO UTF-8, as Util.pm doesn't like this atm. (uts46data.pl)
1233 root 1.243 $^H |= 0x00000600;
1234     }
1235    
1236     BEGIN { AnyEvent::common_sense }
1237 root 1.24
1238 root 1.239 use Carp ();
1239 root 1.1
1240 root 1.379 our $VERSION = '6.02';
1241 root 1.2 our $MODEL;
1242 root 1.1
1243 root 1.2 our @ISA;
1244 root 1.1
1245 root 1.135 our @REGISTRY;
1246    
1247 root 1.242 our $VERBOSE;
1248    
1249 root 1.138 BEGIN {
1250 root 1.313 require "AnyEvent/constants.pl";
1251    
1252 root 1.317 eval "sub TAINT (){" . (${^TAINT}*1) . "}";
1253 root 1.214
1254     delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1255     if ${^TAINT};
1256 root 1.242
1257 root 1.371 $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"} = $ENV{"AE_$_"}
1258     for grep s/^AE_// && !exists $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"}, keys %ENV;
1259    
1260     @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV} = ()
1261     if ${^TAINT};
1262    
1263 root 1.381 # $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_xxx} now valid
1264    
1265 root 1.380 $VERBOSE = length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE} ? $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1 : 3;
1266 root 1.138 }
1267    
1268 root 1.242 our $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY = 10;
1269 root 1.7
1270 root 1.136 our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1271 root 1.126
1272     {
1273     my $idx;
1274     $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1275 root 1.136 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1276     $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1277 root 1.126 }
1278    
1279 root 1.355 our @post_detect;
1280    
1281     sub post_detect(&) {
1282     my ($cb) = @_;
1283    
1284     push @post_detect, $cb;
1285    
1286     defined wantarray
1287     ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1288     : ()
1289     }
1290    
1291     sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1292     @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1293     }
1294    
1295     our $POSTPONE_W;
1296     our @POSTPONE;
1297    
1298     sub _postpone_exec {
1299     undef $POSTPONE_W;
1300    
1301     &{ shift @POSTPONE }
1302     while @POSTPONE;
1303     }
1304    
1305     sub postpone(&) {
1306     push @POSTPONE, shift;
1307    
1308     $POSTPONE_W ||= AE::timer (0, 0, \&_postpone_exec);
1309    
1310     ()
1311     }
1312    
1313 root 1.365 sub log($$;@) {
1314 root 1.376 # only load the big bloated module when we actually are about to log something
1315     if ($_[0] <= $VERBOSE) { # also catches non-numeric levels(!)
1316 root 1.373 require AnyEvent::Log;
1317     # AnyEvent::Log overwrites this function
1318     goto &log;
1319     }
1320 root 1.376
1321     0 # not logged
1322 root 1.373 }
1323    
1324     if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG}) {
1325     require AnyEvent::Log; # AnyEvent::Log does the thing for us
1326 root 1.365 }
1327    
1328 root 1.355 our @models = (
1329 root 1.254 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV:: , 1],
1330 root 1.352 [AnyEvent::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: , 1],
1331 root 1.254 # everything below here will not (normally) be autoprobed
1332 root 1.352 # as the pure perl backend should work everywhere
1333 root 1.135 # and is usually faster
1334 root 1.276 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::, 1],
1335 root 1.254 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib:: , 1], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1336 root 1.61 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1337 root 1.254 [Irssi:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi::], # Irssi has a bogus "Event" package
1338 root 1.232 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1339 root 1.237 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1340 root 1.232 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
1341 root 1.135 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1342     [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1343 root 1.355 [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # a bitch to autodetect
1344 root 1.344 [Cocoa::EventLoop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa::],
1345 root 1.378 [FLTK:: => AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK::],
1346 root 1.1 );
1347    
1348 root 1.361 our @isa_hook;
1349    
1350     sub _isa_set {
1351 root 1.362 my @pkg = ("AnyEvent", (map $_->[0], grep defined, @isa_hook), $MODEL);
1352 root 1.361
1353     @{"$pkg[$_-1]::ISA"} = $pkg[$_]
1354     for 1 .. $#pkg;
1355    
1356 root 1.362 grep $_ && $_->[1], @isa_hook
1357 root 1.361 and AE::_reset ();
1358     }
1359    
1360     # used for hooking AnyEvent::Strict and AnyEvent::Debug::Wrap into the class hierarchy
1361     sub _isa_hook($$;$) {
1362     my ($i, $pkg, $reset_ae) = @_;
1363    
1364 root 1.362 $isa_hook[$i] = $pkg ? [$pkg, $reset_ae] : undef;
1365 root 1.361
1366     _isa_set;
1367     }
1368    
1369 root 1.357 # all autoloaded methods reserve the complete glob, not just the method slot.
1370     # due to bugs in perls method cache implementation.
1371     our @methods = qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar);
1372    
1373 root 1.19 sub detect() {
1374 root 1.363 return $MODEL if $MODEL; # some programs keep references to detect
1375    
1376 root 1.357 local $!; # for good measure
1377     local $SIG{__DIE__}; # we use eval
1378    
1379 root 1.312 # free some memory
1380     *detect = sub () { $MODEL };
1381 root 1.357 # undef &func doesn't correctly update the method cache. grmbl.
1382     # so we delete the whole glob. grmbl.
1383     # otoh, perl doesn't let me undef an active usb, but it lets me free
1384     # a glob with an active sub. hrm. i hope it works, but perl is
1385     # usually buggy in this department. sigh.
1386     delete @{"AnyEvent::"}{@methods};
1387     undef @methods;
1388 root 1.312
1389 root 1.355 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z0-9:]+)$/) {
1390     my $model = $1;
1391     $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model" unless $model =~ s/::$//;
1392 root 1.312 if (eval "require $model") {
1393 root 1.373 AnyEvent::log 7 => "loaded model '$model' (forced by \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}), using it.";
1394 root 1.312 $MODEL = $model;
1395     } else {
1396 root 1.376 AnyEvent::log 5 => "unable to load model '$model' (from \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}):\n$@";
1397 root 1.312 }
1398     }
1399    
1400     # check for already loaded models
1401 root 1.19 unless ($MODEL) {
1402 root 1.312 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1403     my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1404     if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
1405     if (eval "require $model") {
1406 root 1.373 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autodetected model '$model', using it.";
1407 root 1.312 $MODEL = $model;
1408     last;
1409     }
1410 root 1.2 }
1411 root 1.1 }
1412    
1413 root 1.2 unless ($MODEL) {
1414 root 1.312 # try to autoload a model
1415 root 1.61 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1416 root 1.312 my ($package, $model, $autoload) = @$_;
1417     if (
1418     $autoload
1419     and eval "require $package"
1420     and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1421     and eval "require $model"
1422     ) {
1423 root 1.373 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autoloaded model '$model', using it.";
1424 root 1.312 $MODEL = $model;
1425     last;
1426 root 1.8 }
1427 root 1.2 }
1428    
1429 root 1.312 $MODEL
1430 root 1.365 or die "AnyEvent: backend autodetection failed - did you properly install AnyEvent?";
1431 root 1.1 }
1432 root 1.312 }
1433 root 1.19
1434 root 1.355 # free memory only needed for probing
1435     undef @models;
1436     undef @REGISTRY;
1437 root 1.108
1438 root 1.312 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
1439 root 1.168
1440 root 1.338 # now nuke some methods that are overridden by the backend.
1441 root 1.355 # SUPER usage is not allowed in these.
1442 root 1.317 for (qw(time signal child idle)) {
1443     undef &{"AnyEvent::Base::$_"}
1444     if defined &{"$MODEL\::$_"};
1445     }
1446    
1447 root 1.361 _isa_set;
1448    
1449 root 1.367 # we're officially open!
1450    
1451 root 1.339 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}) {
1452 root 1.357 require AnyEvent::Strict;
1453     }
1454    
1455     if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP}) {
1456     require AnyEvent::Debug;
1457     AnyEvent::Debug::wrap ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP});
1458     }
1459    
1460 root 1.366 if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL}) {
1461 root 1.358 require AnyEvent::Socket;
1462 root 1.357 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1463 root 1.358
1464 root 1.359 my $shell = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL};
1465     $shell =~ s/\$\$/$$/g;
1466    
1467     my ($host, $service) = AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport ($shell);
1468 root 1.358 $AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL = AnyEvent::Debug::shell ($host, $service);
1469 root 1.339 }
1470 root 1.167
1471 root 1.367 # now the anyevent environment is set up as the user told us to, so
1472     # call the actual user code - post detects
1473    
1474 root 1.312 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1475 root 1.355 undef @post_detect;
1476 root 1.1
1477 root 1.317 *post_detect = sub(&) {
1478     shift->();
1479    
1480     undef
1481     };
1482    
1483 root 1.19 $MODEL
1484     }
1485    
1486 root 1.357 for my $name (@methods) {
1487     *$name = sub {
1488     detect;
1489     # we use goto because
1490     # a) it makes the thunk more transparent
1491     # b) it allows us to delete the thunk later
1492     goto &{ UNIVERSAL::can AnyEvent => "SUPER::$name" }
1493     };
1494 root 1.1 }
1495    
1496 root 1.169 # utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1497     # to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1498     # allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1499 root 1.219 sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1500 root 1.169 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1501    
1502     # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1503 root 1.241 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<&") : ($w, ">&");
1504 root 1.169
1505 root 1.241 open my $fh2, $mode, $fh
1506 root 1.229 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1507 root 1.169
1508     # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1509    
1510     ($fh2, $rw)
1511     }
1512    
1513 root 1.278 =head1 SIMPLIFIED AE API
1514    
1515     Starting with version 5.0, AnyEvent officially supports a second, much
1516     simpler, API that is designed to reduce the calling, typing and memory
1517 root 1.318 overhead by using function call syntax and a fixed number of parameters.
1518 root 1.278
1519     See the L<AE> manpage for details.
1520    
1521     =cut
1522 root 1.273
1523     package AE;
1524    
1525 root 1.275 our $VERSION = $AnyEvent::VERSION;
1526    
1527 root 1.355 sub _reset() {
1528     eval q{
1529     # fall back to the main API by default - backends and AnyEvent::Base
1530     # implementations can overwrite these.
1531    
1532     sub io($$$) {
1533     AnyEvent->io (fh => $_[0], poll => $_[1] ? "w" : "r", cb => $_[2])
1534     }
1535    
1536     sub timer($$$) {
1537     AnyEvent->timer (after => $_[0], interval => $_[1], cb => $_[2])
1538     }
1539 root 1.273
1540 root 1.355 sub signal($$) {
1541     AnyEvent->signal (signal => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1542     }
1543 root 1.273
1544 root 1.355 sub child($$) {
1545     AnyEvent->child (pid => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1546     }
1547 root 1.273
1548 root 1.355 sub idle($) {
1549 root 1.357 AnyEvent->idle (cb => $_[0]);
1550 root 1.355 }
1551 root 1.273
1552 root 1.355 sub cv(;&) {
1553     AnyEvent->condvar (@_ ? (cb => $_[0]) : ())
1554     }
1555 root 1.273
1556 root 1.355 sub now() {
1557     AnyEvent->now
1558     }
1559 root 1.273
1560 root 1.355 sub now_update() {
1561     AnyEvent->now_update
1562     }
1563 root 1.273
1564 root 1.355 sub time() {
1565     AnyEvent->time
1566     }
1567 root 1.273
1568 root 1.355 *postpone = \&AnyEvent::postpone;
1569 root 1.365 *log = \&AnyEvent::log;
1570 root 1.355 };
1571     die if $@;
1572 root 1.273 }
1573    
1574 root 1.355 BEGIN { _reset }
1575 root 1.354
1576 root 1.19 package AnyEvent::Base;
1577    
1578 root 1.205 # default implementations for many methods
1579 root 1.143
1580 root 1.317 sub time {
1581     eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1582 root 1.312 # probe for availability of Time::HiRes
1583     if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1584 root 1.361 *time = sub { Time::HiRes::time () };
1585     *AE::time = \& Time::HiRes::time ;
1586 root 1.376 *now = \&time;
1587     AnyEvent::log 8 => "AnyEvent: using Time::HiRes for sub-second timing accuracy.";
1588 root 1.312 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1589     } else {
1590 root 1.361 *time = sub { CORE::time };
1591     *AE::time = sub (){ CORE::time };
1592 root 1.376 *now = \&time;
1593     AnyEvent::log 3 => "using built-in time(), WARNING, no sub-second resolution!";
1594 root 1.312 }
1595     };
1596     die if $@;
1597 root 1.242
1598 root 1.317 &time
1599 root 1.179 }
1600 root 1.143
1601 root 1.317 *now = \&time;
1602 root 1.205 sub now_update { }
1603 root 1.143
1604 root 1.352 sub _poll {
1605     Carp::croak "$AnyEvent::MODEL does not support blocking waits. Caught";
1606     }
1607    
1608 root 1.114 # default implementation for ->condvar
1609 root 1.353 # in fact, the default should not be overwritten
1610 root 1.20
1611     sub condvar {
1612 root 1.317 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1613     *condvar = sub {
1614     bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1615     };
1616    
1617     *AE::cv = sub (;&) {
1618     bless { @_ ? (_ae_cb => shift) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1619     };
1620     };
1621     die if $@;
1622    
1623     &condvar
1624 root 1.20 }
1625    
1626     # default implementation for ->signal
1627 root 1.19
1628 root 1.242 our $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1629 root 1.263
1630     sub _have_async_interrupt() {
1631     $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT = 1*(!$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT}
1632 root 1.289 && eval "use Async::Interrupt 1.02 (); 1")
1633 root 1.263 unless defined $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1634    
1635     $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1636     }
1637    
1638 root 1.195 our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1639 root 1.242 our (%SIG_ASY, %SIG_ASY_W);
1640     our ($SIG_COUNT, $SIG_TW);
1641 root 1.195
1642 root 1.261 # install a dummy wakeup watcher to reduce signal catching latency
1643 root 1.312 # used by Impls
1644 root 1.246 sub _sig_add() {
1645     unless ($SIG_COUNT++) {
1646     # try to align timer on a full-second boundary, if possible
1647 root 1.273 my $NOW = AE::now;
1648 root 1.246
1649 root 1.273 $SIG_TW = AE::timer
1650     $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY - ($NOW - int $NOW),
1651     $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY,
1652     sub { } # just for the PERL_ASYNC_CHECK
1653     ;
1654 root 1.246 }
1655     }
1656    
1657     sub _sig_del {
1658     undef $SIG_TW
1659     unless --$SIG_COUNT;
1660     }
1661    
1662 root 1.263 our $_sig_name_init; $_sig_name_init = sub {
1663 root 1.317 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1664 root 1.265 undef $_sig_name_init;
1665 root 1.263
1666 root 1.265 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1667     *sig2num = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2num;
1668     *sig2name = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2name;
1669     } else {
1670     require Config;
1671 root 1.264
1672 root 1.265 my %signame2num;
1673     @signame2num{ split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_name} }
1674     = split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_num};
1675    
1676     my @signum2name;
1677     @signum2name[values %signame2num] = keys %signame2num;
1678    
1679     *sig2num = sub($) {
1680     $_[0] > 0 ? shift : $signame2num{+shift}
1681     };
1682     *sig2name = sub ($) {
1683     $_[0] > 0 ? $signum2name[+shift] : shift
1684     };
1685     }
1686     };
1687     die if $@;
1688 root 1.263 };
1689    
1690     sub sig2num ($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2num }
1691     sub sig2name($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2name }
1692    
1693 root 1.265 sub signal {
1694     eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1695     # probe for availability of Async::Interrupt
1696     if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1697 root 1.376 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using Async::Interrupt for race-free signal handling.";
1698 root 1.265
1699     $SIGPIPE_R = new Async::Interrupt::EventPipe;
1700 root 1.273 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R->fileno, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1701 root 1.242
1702 root 1.265 } else {
1703 root 1.376 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using emulated perl signal handling with latency timer.";
1704 root 1.242
1705 root 1.265 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1706     require AnyEvent::Util;
1707 root 1.261
1708 root 1.265 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1709     AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R, 1) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1710     AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W, 1) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1711     } else {
1712     pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1713 root 1.313 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1714     fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1715 root 1.265
1716     # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1717 root 1.313 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1718     fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1719 root 1.265 }
1720 root 1.242
1721 root 1.265 $SIGPIPE_R
1722     or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1723 root 1.242
1724 root 1.273 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1725 root 1.265 }
1726 root 1.242
1727 root 1.317 *signal = $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1728     ? sub {
1729     my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1730    
1731     # async::interrupt
1732     my $signal = sig2num $arg{signal};
1733     $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1734    
1735     $SIG_ASY{$signal} ||= new Async::Interrupt
1736     cb => sub { undef $SIG_EV{$signal} },
1737     signal => $signal,
1738     pipe => [$SIGPIPE_R->filenos],
1739     pipe_autodrain => 0,
1740     ;
1741    
1742     bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1743     }
1744     : sub {
1745     my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1746    
1747     # pure perl
1748     my $signal = sig2name $arg{signal};
1749     $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1750    
1751     $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1752     local $!;
1753     syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1754     undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1755     };
1756    
1757     # can't do signal processing without introducing races in pure perl,
1758     # so limit the signal latency.
1759     _sig_add;
1760 root 1.242
1761 root 1.317 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1762     }
1763     ;
1764 root 1.200
1765 root 1.265 *AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY = sub {
1766     my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1767 root 1.195
1768 root 1.265 _sig_del;
1769 root 1.195
1770 root 1.265 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1771 root 1.195
1772 root 1.265 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1773     ? delete $SIG_ASY{$signal}
1774     : # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1775     # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1776     # instead of getting the default action.
1777     undef $SIG{$signal}
1778     unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1779     };
1780 root 1.312
1781     *_signal_exec = sub {
1782     $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1783     ? $SIGPIPE_R->drain
1784     : sysread $SIGPIPE_R, (my $dummy), 9;
1785    
1786     while (%SIG_EV) {
1787     for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1788     delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1789 root 1.355 &$_ for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
1790 root 1.312 }
1791     }
1792     };
1793 root 1.265 };
1794     die if $@;
1795 root 1.312
1796 root 1.242 &signal
1797 root 1.19 }
1798    
1799 root 1.20 # default implementation for ->child
1800    
1801     our %PID_CB;
1802     our $CHLD_W;
1803 root 1.37 our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
1804 root 1.20
1805 root 1.312 # used by many Impl's
1806 root 1.254 sub _emit_childstatus($$) {
1807     my (undef, $rpid, $rstatus) = @_;
1808    
1809     $_->($rpid, $rstatus)
1810     for values %{ $PID_CB{$rpid} || {} },
1811     values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} };
1812     }
1813    
1814 root 1.312 sub child {
1815     eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1816     *_sigchld = sub {
1817     my $pid;
1818 root 1.254
1819 root 1.312 AnyEvent->_emit_childstatus ($pid, $?)
1820 root 1.341 while ($pid = waitpid -1, WNOHANG) > 0;
1821 root 1.312 };
1822 root 1.37
1823 root 1.312 *child = sub {
1824     my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1825 root 1.20
1826 root 1.351 my $pid = $arg{pid};
1827     my $cb = $arg{cb};
1828 root 1.20
1829 root 1.351 $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb+0} = $cb;
1830 root 1.20
1831 root 1.312 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1832     $CHLD_W = AE::signal CHLD => \&_sigchld;
1833     # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1834     &_sigchld;
1835     }
1836 root 1.20
1837 root 1.351 bless [$pid, $cb+0], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
1838 root 1.312 };
1839 root 1.20
1840 root 1.312 *AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY = sub {
1841 root 1.351 my ($pid, $icb) = @{$_[0]};
1842 root 1.20
1843 root 1.351 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$icb};
1844 root 1.312 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
1845 root 1.20
1846 root 1.312 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1847     };
1848     };
1849     die if $@;
1850    
1851     &child
1852 root 1.20 }
1853    
1854 root 1.207 # idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1855 root 1.210 # of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1856 root 1.207 # the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1857     sub idle {
1858 root 1.312 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1859     *idle = sub {
1860     my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1861 root 1.207
1862 root 1.312 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1863 root 1.207
1864 root 1.312 $rcb = sub {
1865     if ($cb) {
1866 root 1.356 $w = AE::time;
1867 root 1.312 &$cb;
1868 root 1.356 $w = AE::time - $w;
1869 root 1.312
1870     # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1871     # within some limits
1872     $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1873     $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1874    
1875     $w = AE::timer $w, 0, $rcb;
1876     } else {
1877     # clean up...
1878     undef $w;
1879     undef $rcb;
1880     }
1881     };
1882 root 1.207
1883 root 1.312 $w = AE::timer 0.05, 0, $rcb;
1884 root 1.207
1885 root 1.312 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1886     };
1887 root 1.207
1888 root 1.312 *AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY = sub {
1889     undef $${$_[0]};
1890     };
1891     };
1892     die if $@;
1893 root 1.207
1894 root 1.312 &idle
1895 root 1.207 }
1896    
1897 root 1.116 package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1898    
1899     our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1900    
1901 root 1.333 # only to be used for subclassing
1902     sub new {
1903     my $class = shift;
1904     bless AnyEvent->condvar (@_), $class
1905     }
1906    
1907 root 1.116 package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1908 root 1.114
1909 root 1.243 #use overload
1910     # '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1911     # fallback => 1;
1912    
1913     # save 300+ kilobytes by dirtily hardcoding overloading
1914     ${"AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::OVERLOAD"}{dummy}++; # Register with magic by touching.
1915     *{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = sub { }; # "Make it findable via fetchmethod."
1916     *{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::(&{}'} = sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } }; # &{}
1917     ${'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = 1; # fallback
1918 root 1.131
1919 root 1.239 our $WAITING;
1920    
1921 root 1.114 sub _send {
1922 root 1.116 # nop
1923 root 1.114 }
1924    
1925 root 1.350 sub _wait {
1926 root 1.352 AnyEvent->_poll until $_[0]{_ae_sent};
1927 root 1.350 }
1928    
1929 root 1.114 sub send {
1930 root 1.115 my $cv = shift;
1931     $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1932 root 1.116 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1933 root 1.115 $cv->_send;
1934 root 1.114 }
1935    
1936     sub croak {
1937 root 1.115 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1938 root 1.114 $_[0]->send;
1939     }
1940    
1941     sub ready {
1942     $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1943     }
1944    
1945 root 1.350 sub recv {
1946     unless ($_[0]{_ae_sent}) {
1947     $WAITING
1948 root 1.352 and Carp::croak "AnyEvent::CondVar: recursive blocking wait attempted";
1949 root 1.239
1950 root 1.350 local $WAITING = 1;
1951     $_[0]->_wait;
1952     }
1953 root 1.116
1954 root 1.350 $_[0]{_ae_croak}
1955     and Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1956 root 1.114
1957 root 1.350 wantarray
1958     ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} }
1959     : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1960 root 1.114 }
1961    
1962     sub cb {
1963 root 1.269 my $cv = shift;
1964    
1965     @_
1966     and $cv->{_ae_cb} = shift
1967     and $cv->{_ae_sent}
1968     and (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv);
1969 root 1.270
1970 root 1.269 $cv->{_ae_cb}
1971 root 1.114 }
1972    
1973     sub begin {
1974     ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1975     $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1976     }
1977    
1978     sub end {
1979     return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1980 root 1.124 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1981 root 1.114 }
1982    
1983     # undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1984     *broadcast = \&send;
1985 root 1.350 *wait = \&recv;
1986 root 1.114
1987 root 1.180 =head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1988 root 1.53
1989 root 1.180 In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1990     caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1991     the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1992     checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1993     development.
1994    
1995     As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1996     executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1997     also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1998     program.
1999    
2000     The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
2001     within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
2002     $Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
2003     so on.
2004 root 1.12
2005 root 1.7 =head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
2006    
2007 root 1.371 AnyEvent supports a number of environment variables that tune the
2008     runtime behaviour. They are usually evaluated when AnyEvent is
2009     loaded, initialised, or a submodule that uses them is loaded. Many of
2010     them also cause AnyEvent to load additional modules - for example,
2011     C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP> causes the L<AnyEvent::Debug> module to be
2012     loaded.
2013    
2014     All the environment variables documented here start with
2015     C<PERL_ANYEVENT_>, which is what AnyEvent considers its own
2016     namespace. Other modules are encouraged (but by no means required) to use
2017     C<PERL_ANYEVENT_SUBMODULE> if they have registered the AnyEvent::Submodule
2018     namespace on CPAN, for any submodule. For example, L<AnyEvent::HTTP> could
2019     be expected to use C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HTTP_PROXY> (it should not access env
2020     variables starting with C<AE_>, see below).
2021    
2022     All variables can also be set via the C<AE_> prefix, that is, instead
2023     of setting C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> you can also set C<AE_VERBOSE>. In
2024     case there is a clash btween anyevent and another program that uses
2025     C<AE_something> you can set the corresponding C<PERL_ANYEVENT_something>
2026     variable to the empty string, as those variables take precedence.
2027    
2028     When AnyEvent is first loaded, it copies all C<AE_xxx> env variables
2029     to their C<PERL_ANYEVENT_xxx> counterpart unless that variable already
2030     exists. If taint mode is on, then AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment
2031     variables starting with C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> (or replace them
2032     with C<undef> or the empty string, if the corresaponding C<AE_> variable
2033     is set).
2034    
2035     The exact algorithm is currently:
2036    
2037     1. if taint mode enabled, delete all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables from %ENV
2038     2. copy over AE_xyz to PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz unless the latter alraedy exists
2039     3. if taint mode enabled, set all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables to undef.
2040 root 1.214
2041 root 1.371 This ensures that child processes will not see the C<AE_> variables.
2042    
2043     The following environment variables are currently known to AnyEvent:
2044 root 1.7
2045 root 1.55 =over 4
2046    
2047     =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
2048    
2049 root 1.380 By default, AnyEvent will only log messages with loglevel C<3>
2050     (C<critical>) or higher (see L<AnyEvent::Log>). You can set this
2051     environment variable to a numerical loglevel to make AnyEvent more (or
2052     less) talkative.
2053    
2054     If you want to do more than just set the global logging level
2055 root 1.371 you should have a look at C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>, which allows much more
2056     complex specifications.
2057 root 1.60
2058 root 1.380 When set to C<0> (C<off>), then no messages whatsoever will be logged with
2059     the default logging settings.
2060    
2061     When set to C<5> or higher (C<warn>), causes AnyEvent to warn about
2062     unexpected conditions, such as not being able to load the event model
2063     specified by C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>, or a guard callback throwing an
2064     exception - this is the minimum recommended level.
2065 root 1.60
2066 root 1.376 When set to C<7> or higher (info), cause AnyEvent to report which event model it
2067     chooses.
2068 root 1.55
2069 root 1.376 When set to C<8> or higher (debug), then AnyEvent will report extra information on
2070 root 1.244 which optional modules it loads and how it implements certain features.
2071    
2072 root 1.371 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>
2073    
2074     Accepts rather complex logging specifications. For example, you could log
2075     all C<debug> messages of some module to stderr, warnings and above to
2076     stderr, and errors and above to syslog, with:
2077    
2078     PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG=Some::Module=debug,+log:filter=warn,+%syslog:%syslog=error,syslog
2079    
2080     For the rather extensive details, see L<AnyEvent::Log>.
2081    
2082 root 1.375 This variable is evaluated when AnyEvent (or L<AnyEvent::Log>) is loaded,
2083     so will take effect even before AnyEvent has initialised itself.
2084    
2085 root 1.371 Note that specifying this environment variable causes the L<AnyEvent::Log>
2086     module to be loaded, while C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> does not, so only
2087     using the latter saves a few hundred kB of memory until the first message
2088     is being logged.
2089    
2090 root 1.167 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
2091    
2092     AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
2093     argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
2094 root 1.170 will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
2095 root 1.218 check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
2096 root 1.170 it will croak.
2097    
2098     In other words, enables "strict" mode.
2099    
2100 root 1.330 Unlike C<use strict> (or its modern cousin, C<< use L<common::sense>
2101 root 1.243 >>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in production. Keeping
2102     C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while developing programs
2103     can be very useful, however.
2104 root 1.167
2105 root 1.358 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL>
2106    
2107 root 1.359 If this env variable is set, then its contents will be interpreted by
2108     C<AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport> (after replacing every occurance of
2109     C<$$> by the process pid) and an C<AnyEvent::Debug::shell> is bound on
2110     that port. The shell object is saved in C<$AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL>.
2111    
2112 root 1.374 This happens when the first watcher is created.
2113 root 1.358
2114     For example, to bind a debug shell on a unix domain socket in
2115 root 1.359 F<< /tmp/debug<pid>.sock >>, you could use this:
2116    
2117 root 1.364 PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL=/tmp/debug\$\$.sock perlprog
2118 root 1.358
2119 root 1.359 Note that creating sockets in F</tmp> is very unsafe on multiuser
2120     systems.
2121 root 1.358
2122     =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP>
2123    
2124     Can be set to C<0>, C<1> or C<2> and enables wrapping of all watchers for
2125     debugging purposes. See C<AnyEvent::Debug::wrap> for details.
2126    
2127 root 1.55 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
2128    
2129     This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
2130 root 1.355 auto detection and -probing kicks in.
2131    
2132     It normally is a string consisting entirely of ASCII letters (e.g. C<EV>
2133     or C<IOAsync>). The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended and the
2134     resulting module name is loaded and - if the load was successful - used as
2135     event model backend. If it fails to load then AnyEvent will proceed with
2136 root 1.128 auto detection and -probing.
2137 root 1.55
2138 root 1.355 If the string ends with C<::> instead (e.g. C<AnyEvent::Impl::EV::>) then
2139     nothing gets prepended and the module name is used as-is (hint: C<::> at
2140     the end of a string designates a module name and quotes it appropriately).
2141 root 1.55
2142 root 1.352 For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Loop::Perl>) you
2143 root 1.55 could start your program like this:
2144    
2145 root 1.151 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
2146 root 1.55
2147 root 1.125 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
2148    
2149     Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
2150     for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
2151 root 1.128 of auto probing).
2152 root 1.125
2153     Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
2154     current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
2155     used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
2156     list.
2157    
2158 root 1.127 This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
2159     against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
2160 root 1.194 small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
2161 root 1.127
2162 root 1.125 Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
2163     but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
2164     - only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
2165 root 1.128 addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
2166 root 1.125 IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
2167    
2168 root 1.372 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HOSTS>
2169    
2170     This variable, if specified, overrides the F</etc/hosts> file used by
2171     L<AnyEvent::Socket>C<::resolve_sockaddr>, i.e. hosts aliases will be read
2172     from that file instead.
2173    
2174 root 1.127 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
2175    
2176 root 1.371 Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension for
2177     DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, especially
2178     when DNSSEC is involved, but some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS
2179     packets, which is why it is off by default.
2180 root 1.127
2181     Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
2182     EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
2183    
2184 root 1.142 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
2185    
2186     The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
2187     will create in parallel.
2188    
2189 root 1.226 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
2190    
2191     The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
2192     resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
2193     sent to the DNS server.
2194    
2195     =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
2196    
2197 root 1.371 The absolute path to a F<resolv.conf>-style file to use instead of
2198     F</etc/resolv.conf> (or the OS-specific configuration) in the default
2199     resolver, or the empty string to select the default configuration.
2200 root 1.226
2201 root 1.227 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
2202    
2203     When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
2204     L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
2205 root 1.371 variables are nonempty, they will be used to specify CA certificate
2206     locations instead of a system-dependent default.
2207 root 1.227
2208 root 1.244 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_GUARD> and C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT>
2209    
2210     When these are set to C<1>, then the respective modules are not
2211     loaded. Mostly good for testing AnyEvent itself.
2212    
2213 root 1.55 =back
2214 root 1.7
2215 root 1.180 =head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
2216    
2217     This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
2218     a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
2219     provide AnyEvent compatibility.
2220    
2221     If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
2222     supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
2223     pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
2224     the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
2225     C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
2226     AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
2227    
2228     Example:
2229    
2230     push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
2231    
2232     This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
2233     package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
2234    
2235     When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
2236     will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
2237     C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
2238    
2239     The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
2240     L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
2241     and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
2242     see the sources.
2243    
2244     If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
2245     provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
2246    
2247     The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
2248     terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
2249     in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
2250     inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
2251     I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
2252    
2253     I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
2254     condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
2255     C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
2256     not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
2257    
2258 root 1.53 =head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
2259 root 1.2
2260 root 1.78 The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
2261 root 1.53 to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
2262     program when the user enters quit:
2263 root 1.2
2264     use AnyEvent;
2265    
2266     my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
2267    
2268 root 1.53 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
2269     fh => \*STDIN,
2270     poll => 'r',
2271     cb => sub {
2272     warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
2273     chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
2274     warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
2275 root 1.118 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
2276 root 1.53 },
2277     );
2278 root 1.2
2279 root 1.287 my $time_watcher = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, interval => 1, cb => sub {
2280     warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' at most every second
2281     });
2282 root 1.2
2283 root 1.118 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
2284 root 1.2
2285 root 1.5 =head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
2286    
2287     Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
2288     API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
2289    
2290     my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); # blocks
2291    
2292     my $transaction = $fcp->txn_client_get ($url); # does not block
2293     $transaction->cb ( sub { ... } ); # set optional result callback
2294     my $data = $transaction->result; # possibly blocks
2295    
2296     The C<client_get> method works like C<LWP::Simple::get>: it requests the
2297     given URL and waits till the data has arrived. It is defined to be:
2298    
2299     sub client_get { $_[0]->txn_client_get ($_[1])->result }
2300    
2301     And in fact is automatically generated. This is the blocking API of
2302     L<Net::FCP>, and it works as simple as in any other, similar, module.
2303    
2304     More complicated is C<txn_client_get>: It only creates a transaction
2305     (completion, result, ...) object and initiates the transaction.
2306    
2307     my $txn = bless { }, Net::FCP::Txn::;
2308    
2309     It also creates a condition variable that is used to signal the completion
2310     of the request:
2311    
2312     $txn->{finished} = AnyAvent->condvar;
2313    
2314     It then creates a socket in non-blocking mode.
2315    
2316     socket $txn->{fh}, ...;
2317     fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK;
2318     connect $txn->{fh}, ...
2319     and !$!{EWOULDBLOCK}
2320     and !$!{EINPROGRESS}
2321     and Carp::croak "unable to connect: $!\n";
2322    
2323 root 1.6 Then it creates a write-watcher which gets called whenever an error occurs
2324 root 1.5 or the connection succeeds:
2325    
2326     $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'w', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_w });
2327    
2328     And returns this transaction object. The C<fh_ready_w> callback gets
2329     called as soon as the event loop detects that the socket is ready for
2330     writing.
2331    
2332     The C<fh_ready_w> method makes the socket blocking again, writes the
2333     request data and replaces the watcher by a read watcher (waiting for reply
2334     data). The actual code is more complicated, but that doesn't matter for
2335     this example:
2336    
2337     fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, 0;
2338     syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
2339     or die "connection or write error";
2340     $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
2341    
2342     Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
2343 root 1.128 result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
2344 root 1.5
2345     sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
2346    
2347     if (end-of-file or data complete) {
2348     $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
2349 root 1.118 $txn->{finished}->send;
2350 root 1.6 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
2351 root 1.5 }
2352    
2353     The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
2354     request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
2355     data:
2356    
2357 root 1.118 $txn->{finished}->recv;
2358 root 1.6 return $txn->{result};
2359 root 1.5
2360     The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
2361 root 1.128 that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
2362 root 1.52 whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
2363 root 1.5 and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
2364 root 1.318 problems get reported to the code that tries to use the result, not in a
2365 root 1.5 random callback.
2366    
2367     All of this enables the following usage styles:
2368    
2369     1. Blocking:
2370    
2371     my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
2372    
2373 root 1.49 2. Blocking, but running in parallel:
2374 root 1.5
2375     my @datas = map $_->result,
2376     map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
2377     @urls;
2378    
2379     Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
2380     anything about events.
2381    
2382 root 1.49 3a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
2383 root 1.5
2384 root 1.49 use EV;
2385 root 1.5
2386     $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2387     my $txn = shift;
2388     my $data = $txn->result;
2389     ...
2390     });
2391    
2392 root 1.49 EV::loop;
2393 root 1.5
2394     3b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
2395    
2396     use AnyEvent;
2397    
2398     my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
2399    
2400     $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2401     ...
2402 root 1.118 $quit->send;
2403 root 1.5 });
2404    
2405 root 1.118 $quit->recv;
2406 root 1.5
2407 root 1.64
2408 root 1.91 =head1 BENCHMARKS
2409 root 1.64
2410 root 1.65 To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
2411 root 1.91 over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
2412     of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
2413 root 1.77
2414 root 1.91 =head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
2415    
2416     Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
2417 root 1.128 through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
2418 root 1.91 timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
2419     which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
2420    
2421     Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
2422 root 1.278 distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2423     for the EV and Perl backends only.
2424 root 1.91
2425     =head3 Explanation of the columns
2426 root 1.68
2427     I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
2428     different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
2429     loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
2430     and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
2431     would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
2432     of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
2433    
2434     I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
2435     RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
2436     and Perl-based overheads.
2437    
2438     I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
2439     takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
2440     all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
2441     and memory usage is not included in the figures.
2442    
2443     I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
2444     callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
2445 root 1.118 invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
2446 root 1.69 signal the end of this phase.
2447 root 1.64
2448 root 1.71 I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
2449 root 1.68 watcher.
2450 root 1.64
2451 root 1.91 =head3 Results
2452 root 1.64
2453 root 1.75 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
2454 root 1.278 EV/EV 100000 223 0.47 0.43 0.27 EV native interface
2455     EV/Any 100000 223 0.48 0.42 0.26 EV + AnyEvent watchers
2456     Coro::EV/Any 100000 223 0.47 0.42 0.26 coroutines + Coro::Signal
2457     Perl/Any 100000 431 2.70 0.74 0.92 pure perl implementation
2458     Event/Event 16000 516 31.16 31.84 0.82 Event native interface
2459     Event/Any 16000 1203 42.61 34.79 1.80 Event + AnyEvent watchers
2460     IOAsync/Any 16000 1911 41.92 27.45 16.81 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
2461     IOAsync/Any 16000 1726 40.69 26.37 15.25 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
2462     Glib/Any 16000 1118 89.00 12.57 51.17 quadratic behaviour
2463     Tk/Any 2000 1346 20.96 10.75 8.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
2464     POE/Any 2000 6951 108.97 795.32 14.24 via POE::Loop::Event
2465     POE/Any 2000 6648 94.79 774.40 575.51 via POE::Loop::Select
2466 root 1.64
2467 root 1.91 =head3 Discussion
2468 root 1.68
2469     The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
2470     well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
2471     can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
2472 root 1.80 file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
2473     the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
2474     boost.
2475 root 1.68
2476 root 1.95 Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
2477     overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
2478     the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
2479     higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
2480    
2481 root 1.96 To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
2482     benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
2483     EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
2484     cycles with POE.
2485    
2486 root 1.68 C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
2487 root 1.278 maximal/minimal, respectively. When using the L<AE> API there is zero
2488     overhead (when going through the AnyEvent API create is about 5-6 times
2489     slower, with other times being equal, so still uses far less memory than
2490     any other event loop and is still faster than Event natively).
2491 root 1.64
2492     The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
2493 root 1.86 constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
2494     interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
2495     adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
2496     performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
2497     them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
2498 root 1.64
2499 root 1.90 The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
2500     cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
2501 root 1.64
2502 root 1.220 C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
2503     when using its pure perl backend.
2504    
2505 root 1.90 C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
2506 root 1.73 faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
2507     C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
2508     watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
2509     making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
2510     (note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
2511     inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
2512 root 1.64
2513 root 1.73 The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
2514 root 1.64 more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
2515 root 1.68 precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
2516     file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
2517     employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
2518 root 1.87 hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
2519     above).
2520 root 1.68
2521 root 1.103 C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
2522     select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
2523     be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
2524     memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
2525     as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
2526 root 1.87 requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
2527     invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
2528 root 1.103 implementation.
2529    
2530     The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
2531     for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
2532     small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
2533     optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
2534     using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
2535     memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
2536     design).
2537 root 1.72
2538 root 1.91 =head3 Summary
2539 root 1.72
2540 root 1.87 =over 4
2541    
2542 root 1.89 =item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
2543     (even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
2544     performance with or without AnyEvent.
2545 root 1.72
2546 root 1.87 =item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
2547 root 1.89 the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
2548 root 1.362 does AnyEvent add significant overhead.
2549 root 1.72
2550 root 1.90 =item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
2551 root 1.72 reasonable memory usage.
2552 root 1.64
2553 root 1.87 =back
2554    
2555 root 1.91 =head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
2556    
2557 root 1.128 This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
2558     creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
2559 root 1.91 timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
2560     watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
2561     watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
2562    
2563     The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
2564     are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
2565 root 1.128 fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
2566 root 1.91 timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
2567     most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
2568    
2569 root 1.128 In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
2570 root 1.91 (1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
2571 root 1.92 connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
2572 root 1.91
2573     Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
2574 root 1.278 distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2575     for the EV and Perl backends only.
2576 root 1.91
2577     =head3 Explanation of the columns
2578    
2579     I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
2580 root 1.94 each server has a read and write socket end).
2581 root 1.91
2582 root 1.128 I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
2583 root 1.91 nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
2584    
2585     I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
2586     single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
2587 root 1.93 it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
2588     a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
2589 root 1.91
2590     =head3 Results
2591    
2592 root 1.220 name sockets create request
2593 root 1.278 EV 20000 62.66 7.99
2594     Perl 20000 68.32 32.64
2595     IOAsync 20000 174.06 101.15 epoll
2596     IOAsync 20000 174.67 610.84 poll
2597     Event 20000 202.69 242.91
2598     Glib 20000 557.01 1689.52
2599     POE 20000 341.54 12086.32 uses POE::Loop::Event
2600 root 1.91
2601     =head3 Discussion
2602    
2603     This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
2604     particular event loop.
2605    
2606     EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
2607     is relatively high, though.
2608    
2609     Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
2610     loops Event and Glib.
2611    
2612 root 1.220 IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
2613     good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
2614    
2615 root 1.91 Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
2616     understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
2617     the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
2618     uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
2619    
2620     Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
2621     clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
2622    
2623     POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
2624     as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
2625     it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
2626    
2627     =head3 Summary
2628    
2629     =over 4
2630    
2631 root 1.103 =item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
2632 root 1.91
2633     =item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
2634    
2635     =back
2636    
2637     =head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
2638    
2639     While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
2640     large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
2641     I/O watchers.
2642    
2643     In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
2644     case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
2645     one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
2646     well.
2647    
2648     The columns are identical to the previous table.
2649    
2650     =head3 Results
2651    
2652     name sockets create request
2653     EV 16 20.00 6.54
2654 root 1.99 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2655 root 1.91 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2656     Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2657     POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2658    
2659     =head3 Discussion
2660    
2661     The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2662     server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2663     in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2664 root 1.97 to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2665     speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2666     them).
2667 root 1.91
2668     EV is again fastest.
2669    
2670 elmex 1.129 Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2671 root 1.102 loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2672     matter.
2673 root 1.91
2674 root 1.97 POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2675 root 1.91 others.
2676    
2677     =head3 Summary
2678    
2679     =over 4
2680    
2681     =item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2682     watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2683    
2684     =back
2685    
2686 root 1.215 =head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2687    
2688     Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2689     could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2690     simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2691     shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2692 root 1.218 fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2693     very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2694 root 1.215 baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2695    
2696     The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2697     connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2698     creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2699 root 1.218 test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2700     benchmark nevertheless.
2701 root 1.215
2702     name runtime
2703     Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2704     + optimized 0.122 sec
2705     Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2706     + optimized 0.138 sec
2707     Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2708     POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2709     POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2710     POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2711    
2712     AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2713     AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2714     +state machine 0.134 sec
2715    
2716 root 1.218 The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2717 root 1.215 benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2718     defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2719     written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2720     AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2721 root 1.218 resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2722 root 1.215 generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2723     connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2724    
2725     The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2726 root 1.218 offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2727     Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2728     non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2729    
2730     As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2731     hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2732     backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2733 root 1.215
2734     And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2735 root 1.288 slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda
2736     higher level ("unoptimised") abstractions by a large margin, even though
2737     it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O in a non-blocking way.
2738 root 1.218
2739     The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2740     F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2741 root 1.288 part of the IO::Lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2742 root 1.216
2743 root 1.64
2744 root 1.185 =head1 SIGNALS
2745    
2746     AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2747    
2748     =over 4
2749    
2750     =item SIGCHLD
2751    
2752     A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2753     emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2754     event loops install a similar handler.
2755    
2756 root 1.235 Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2757     AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2758 root 1.219
2759 root 1.185 =item SIGPIPE
2760    
2761     A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2762     when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2763    
2764     The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2765     on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2766     badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2767     program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2768     some random socket.
2769    
2770     The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2771     that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2772    
2773     Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2774    
2775     =back
2776    
2777     =cut
2778    
2779 root 1.219 undef $SIG{CHLD}
2780     if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2781    
2782 root 1.185 $SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2783     unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2784    
2785 root 1.242 =head1 RECOMMENDED/OPTIONAL MODULES
2786    
2787     One of AnyEvent's main goals is to be 100% Pure-Perl(tm): only perl (and
2788 root 1.330 its built-in modules) are required to use it.
2789 root 1.242
2790     That does not mean that AnyEvent won't take advantage of some additional
2791     modules if they are installed.
2792    
2793 root 1.301 This section explains which additional modules will be used, and how they
2794 root 1.299 affect AnyEvent's operation.
2795 root 1.242
2796     =over 4
2797    
2798     =item L<Async::Interrupt>
2799    
2800     This slightly arcane module is used to implement fast signal handling: To
2801     my knowledge, there is no way to do completely race-free and quick
2802     signal handling in pure perl. To ensure that signals still get
2803     delivered, AnyEvent will start an interval timer to wake up perl (and
2804 root 1.247 catch the signals) with some delay (default is 10 seconds, look for
2805 root 1.242 C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>).
2806    
2807     If this module is available, then it will be used to implement signal
2808     catching, which means that signals will not be delayed, and the event loop
2809 root 1.300 will not be interrupted regularly, which is more efficient (and good for
2810 root 1.242 battery life on laptops).
2811    
2812     This affects not just the pure-perl event loop, but also other event loops
2813     that have no signal handling on their own (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt).
2814    
2815 root 1.247 Some event loops (POE, Event, Event::Lib) offer signal watchers natively,
2816     and either employ their own workarounds (POE) or use AnyEvent's workaround
2817     (using C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>). Installing L<Async::Interrupt>
2818     does nothing for those backends.
2819    
2820 root 1.242 =item L<EV>
2821    
2822     This module isn't really "optional", as it is simply one of the backend
2823     event loops that AnyEvent can use. However, it is simply the best event
2824     loop available in terms of features, speed and stability: It supports
2825     the AnyEvent API optimally, implements all the watcher types in XS, does
2826     automatic timer adjustments even when no monotonic clock is available,
2827     can take avdantage of advanced kernel interfaces such as C<epoll> and
2828     C<kqueue>, and is the fastest backend I<by far>. You can even embed
2829     L<Glib>/L<Gtk2> in it (or vice versa, see L<EV::Glib> and L<Glib::EV>).
2830    
2831 root 1.316 If you only use backends that rely on another event loop (e.g. C<Tk>),
2832     then this module will do nothing for you.
2833    
2834 root 1.242 =item L<Guard>
2835    
2836     The guard module, when used, will be used to implement
2837     C<AnyEvent::Util::guard>. This speeds up guards considerably (and uses a
2838     lot less memory), but otherwise doesn't affect guard operation much. It is
2839     purely used for performance.
2840    
2841     =item L<JSON> and L<JSON::XS>
2842    
2843 root 1.291 One of these modules is required when you want to read or write JSON data
2844 root 1.316 via L<AnyEvent::Handle>. L<JSON> is also written in pure-perl, but can take
2845 root 1.248 advantage of the ultra-high-speed L<JSON::XS> module when it is installed.
2846 root 1.242
2847     =item L<Net::SSLeay>
2848    
2849     Implementing TLS/SSL in Perl is certainly interesting, but not very
2850     worthwhile: If this module is installed, then L<AnyEvent::Handle> (with
2851     the help of L<AnyEvent::TLS>), gains the ability to do TLS/SSL.
2852    
2853     =item L<Time::HiRes>
2854    
2855     This module is part of perl since release 5.008. It will be used when the
2856 root 1.330 chosen event library does not come with a timing source of its own. The
2857 root 1.352 pure-perl event loop (L<AnyEvent::Loop>) will additionally load it to
2858 root 1.242 try to use a monotonic clock for timing stability.
2859    
2860     =back
2861    
2862    
2863 root 1.55 =head1 FORK
2864    
2865     Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2866 root 1.308 because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll> calls
2867     - higher performance APIs such as BSD's kqueue or the dreaded Linux epoll
2868     are usually badly thought-out hacks that are incompatible with fork in
2869     one way or another. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware and ensures that you
2870     continue event-processing in both parent and child (or both, if you know
2871     what you are doing).
2872    
2873     This means that, in general, you cannot fork and do event processing in
2874     the child if the event library was initialised before the fork (which
2875     usually happens when the first AnyEvent watcher is created, or the library
2876     is loaded).
2877 root 1.301
2878 root 1.55 If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2879 root 1.242 watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child OR you must do
2880     something completely out of the scope of AnyEvent.
2881 root 1.55
2882 root 1.301 The problem of doing event processing in the parent I<and> the child
2883     is much more complicated: even for backends that I<are> fork-aware or
2884     fork-safe, their behaviour is not usually what you want: fork clones all
2885     watchers, that means all timers, I/O watchers etc. are active in both
2886 root 1.308 parent and child, which is almost never what you want. USing C<exec>
2887     to start worker children from some kind of manage rprocess is usually
2888     preferred, because it is much easier and cleaner, at the expense of having
2889     to have another binary.
2890 root 1.301
2891 root 1.64
2892 root 1.55 =head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2893    
2894     AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2895     $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2896     execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2897     make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2898     will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2899     specified in the variable.
2900    
2901     You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2902     before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2903    
2904 root 1.151 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2905    
2906     use AnyEvent;
2907 root 1.55
2908 root 1.107 Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2909     be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2910 root 1.167 probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2911 root 1.213 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2912 root 1.107
2913 root 1.218 Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2914     C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2915     enabled.
2916    
2917 root 1.64
2918 root 1.156 =head1 BUGS
2919    
2920     Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2921     to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2922     and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2923 root 1.197 memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2924 root 1.156 pronounced).
2925    
2926    
2927 root 1.2 =head1 SEE ALSO
2928    
2929 root 1.334 Tutorial/Introduction: L<AnyEvent::Intro>.
2930    
2931     FAQ: L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
2932    
2933 root 1.365 Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util> (misc. grab-bag), L<AnyEvent::Log>
2934     (simply logging).
2935    
2936     Development/Debugging: L<AnyEvent::Strict> (stricter checking),
2937     L<AnyEvent::Debug> (interactive shell, watcher tracing).
2938 root 1.125
2939 root 1.365 Supported event modules: L<AnyEvent::Loop>, L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>,
2940     L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>,
2941     L<Qt>, L<POE>, L<FLTK>.
2942 root 1.108
2943     Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
2944     L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2945     L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2946 root 1.365 L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>, L<Anyevent::Impl::Irssi>,
2947     L<AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK>.
2948 root 1.108
2949 root 1.365 Non-blocking handles, pipes, stream sockets, TCP clients and
2950 root 1.230 servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
2951 root 1.125
2952 root 1.122 Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2953    
2954 root 1.335 Thread support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>, L<Coro::Event>.
2955 root 1.5
2956 root 1.334 Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>,
2957 root 1.230 L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
2958 root 1.2
2959 root 1.64
2960 root 1.54 =head1 AUTHOR
2961    
2962 root 1.151 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2963     http://home.schmorp.de/
2964 root 1.2
2965     =cut
2966    
2967     1
2968 root 1.1