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Revision: 1.376
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# Content
1 =head1 NAME
2
3 AnyEvent - the DBI of event loop programming
4
5 EV, Event, Glib, Tk, Perl, Event::Lib, Irssi, rxvt-unicode, IO::Async, Qt,
6 FLTK and POE are various supported event loops/environments.
7
8 =head1 SYNOPSIS
9
10 use AnyEvent;
11
12 # if you prefer function calls, look at the AE manpage for
13 # an alternative API.
14
15 # file handle or descriptor readable
16 my $w = AnyEvent->io (fh => $fh, poll => "r", cb => sub { ... });
17
18 # one-shot or repeating timers
19 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, cb => sub { ... });
20 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => $seconds, interval => $seconds, cb => ...);
21
22 print AnyEvent->now; # prints current event loop time
23 print AnyEvent->time; # think Time::HiRes::time or simply CORE::time.
24
25 # POSIX signal
26 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "TERM", cb => sub { ... });
27
28 # child process exit
29 my $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => $pid, cb => sub {
30 my ($pid, $status) = @_;
31 ...
32 });
33
34 # called when event loop idle (if applicable)
35 my $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => sub { ... });
36
37 my $w = AnyEvent->condvar; # stores whether a condition was flagged
38 $w->send; # wake up current and all future recv's
39 $w->recv; # enters "main loop" till $condvar gets ->send
40 # use a condvar in callback mode:
41 $w->cb (sub { $_[0]->recv });
42
43 =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 =head1 SUPPORT
50
51 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 channel, too.
55
56 See the AnyEvent project page at the B<Schmorpforge Ta-Sa Software
57 Repository>, at L<http://anyevent.schmorp.de>, for more info.
58
59 =head1 WHY YOU SHOULD USE THIS MODULE (OR NOT)
60
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 interfaces to whatever event model the main program happens to use, in a
69 pragmatic way. For event models and certain classes of immortals alike,
70 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 cannot change this, but it can hide the differences between those event
73 loops.
74
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 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 like joining a cult: After you join, you are dependent on them and you
84 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
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 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
97 In addition to being free of having to use I<the one and only true event
98 model>, AnyEvent also is free of bloat and policy: with POE or similar
99 modules, you get an enormous amount of code and strict rules you have to
100 follow. AnyEvent, on the other hand, is lean and to the point, by only
101 offering the functionality that is necessary, in as thin as a wrapper as
102 technically possible.
103
104 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 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
114 =head1 DESCRIPTION
115
116 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
121 The interface itself is vaguely similar, but not identical to the L<Event>
122 module.
123
124 During the first call of any watcher-creation method, the module tries
125 to detect the currently loaded event loop by probing whether one of the
126 following modules is already loaded: L<EV>, L<AnyEvent::Loop>,
127 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 available, the pure-perl L<AnyEvent::Loop> should always work, so
131 the other two are not normally tried.
132
133 Because AnyEvent first checks for modules that are already loaded, loading
134 an event model explicitly before first using AnyEvent will likely make
135 that model the default. For example:
136
137 use Tk;
138 use AnyEvent;
139
140 # .. AnyEvent will likely default to Tk
141
142 The I<likely> means that, if any module loads another event model and
143 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
147 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
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 the callback to call, the file handle to watch, etc.
156
157 These watchers are normal Perl objects with normal Perl lifetime. After
158 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 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 callbacks must not C<die> >>. The former is good programming practice in
165 Perl and the latter stems from the fact that exception handling differs
166 widely between event loops.
167
168 To disable a watcher you have to destroy it (e.g. by setting the
169 variable you store it in to C<undef> or otherwise deleting all references
170 to it).
171
172 All watchers are created by calling a method on the C<AnyEvent> class.
173
174 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 One way to achieve that is this pattern:
178
179 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
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 =head2 I/O WATCHERS
189
190 $w = AnyEvent->io (
191 fh => <filehandle_or_fileno>,
192 poll => <"r" or "w">,
193 cb => <callback>,
194 );
195
196 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
199 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 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
211 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 The I/O watcher might use the underlying file descriptor or a copy of it.
216 You must not close a file handle as long as any watcher is active on the
217 underlying file descriptor.
218
219 Some event loops issue spurious readiness notifications, so you should
220 always use non-blocking calls when reading/writing from/to your file
221 handles.
222
223 Example: wait for readability of STDIN, then read a line and disable the
224 watcher.
225
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 =head2 TIME WATCHERS
233
234 $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 You can create a time watcher by calling the C<< AnyEvent->timer >>
243 method with the following mandatory arguments:
244
245 C<after> specifies after how many seconds (fractional values are
246 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
253 The callback will normally be invoked only once. If you specify another
254 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 false value, then it is treated as if it were not specified at all.
258
259 The callback will be rescheduled before invoking the callback, but no
260 attempt is made to avoid timer drift in most backends, so the interval is
261 only approximate.
262
263 Example: fire an event after 7.7 seconds.
264
265 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 7.7, cb => sub {
266 warn "timeout\n";
267 });
268
269 # to cancel the timer:
270 undef $w;
271
272 Example 2: fire an event after 0.5 seconds, then roughly every second.
273
274 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (after => 0.5, interval => 1, cb => sub {
275 warn "timeout\n";
276 };
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 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 fire "after a second" might actually take six years to finally fire.
289
290 AnyEvent cannot compensate for this. The only event loop that is conscious
291 of these issues is L<EV>, which offers both relative (ev_timer, based
292 on true relative time) and absolute (ev_periodic, based on wallclock time)
293 timers.
294
295 AnyEvent always prefers relative timers, if available, matching the
296 AnyEvent API.
297
298 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 It progresses independently of any event loop processing, i.e. each call
309 will check the system clock, which usually gets updated frequently.
310
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 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 L<AnyEvent::Handle> uses this to update its activity timeouts).
324
325 The rest of this section is only of relevance if you try to be very exact
326 with your timing; you can skip it without a bad conscience.
327
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 The event loop is running and has just invoked one of your callbacks at
332 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 With L<EV>, C<< AnyEvent->time >> returns C<501> (as that is the current
342 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 higher drift (and a lot more system calls to get the current time).
350
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 =item AnyEvent->now_update
360
361 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
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 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 Note that updating the time I<might> cause some events to be handled.
380
381 =back
382
383 =head2 SIGNAL WATCHERS
384
385 $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => <uppercase_signal_name>, cb => <callback>);
386
387 You can watch for signals using a signal watcher, C<signal> is the signal
388 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
391 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 Multiple signal occurrences can be clumped together into one callback
396 invocation, and callback invocation will be synchronous. Synchronous means
397 that it might take a while until the signal gets handled by the process,
398 but it is guaranteed not to interrupt any other callbacks.
399
400 The main advantage of using these watchers is that you can share a signal
401 between multiple watchers, and AnyEvent will ensure that signals will not
402 interrupt your program at bad times.
403
404 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 Example: exit on SIGINT
409
410 my $w = AnyEvent->signal (signal => "INT", cb => sub { exit 1 });
411
412 =head3 Restart Behaviour
413
414 While restart behaviour is up to the event loop implementation, most will
415 not restart syscalls (that includes L<Async::Interrupt> and AnyEvent's
416 pure perl implementation).
417
418 =head3 Safe/Unsafe Signals
419
420 Perl signals can be either "safe" (synchronous to opcode handling) or
421 "unsafe" (asynchronous) - the former might get delayed indefinitely, the
422 latter might corrupt your memory.
423
424 AnyEvent signal handlers are, in addition, synchronous to the event loop,
425 i.e. they will not interrupt your running perl program but will only be
426 called as part of the normal event handling (just like timer, I/O etc.
427 callbacks, too).
428
429 =head3 Signal Races, Delays and Workarounds
430
431 Many event loops (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt, IO::Async) do not support attaching
432 callbacks to signals in a generic way, which is a pity, as you cannot
433 do race-free signal handling in perl, requiring C libraries for
434 this. AnyEvent will try to do its best, which means in some cases,
435 signals will be delayed. The maximum time a signal might be delayed is
436 specified in C<$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 will cause fewer spurious wake-ups, which is better for power and CPU
441 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 (and not with L<POE> currently, as POE does its own workaround with
447 one-second latency). For those, you just have to suffer the delays.
448
449 =head2 CHILD PROCESS WATCHERS
450
451 $w = AnyEvent->child (pid => <process id>, cb => <callback>);
452
453 You can also watch for a child process exit and catch its exit status.
454
455 The child process is specified by the C<pid> argument (on some backends,
456 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
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
470 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 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
486 As most event loops do not support waiting for child events, they will be
487 emulated by AnyEvent in most cases, in which case the latency and race
488 problems mentioned in the description of signal watchers apply.
489
490 Example: fork a process and wait for it
491
492 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
508 =head2 IDLE WATCHERS
509
510 $w = AnyEvent->idle (cb => <callback>);
511
512 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
515 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 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 =head2 CONDITION VARIABLES
549
550 $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
551
552 $cv->send (<list>);
553 my @res = $cv->recv;
554
555 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 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
562 The tool to do that is called a "condition variable", so called because
563 they represent a condition that must become true.
564
565 Now is probably a good time to look at the examples further below.
566
567 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 becomes true, with the condition variable as the first argument (but not
571 the results).
572
573 After creation, the condition variable is "false" until it becomes "true"
574 by calling the C<send> method (or calling the condition variable as if it
575 were a callback, read about the caveats in the description for the C<<
576 ->send >> method).
577
578 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 =item * Condition variables represent a transaction - functions that start
594 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
602 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 then a condition variable would be the ideal candidate to signal the
605 availability of results. The user can either act when the callback is
606 called or can synchronously C<< ->recv >> for the results.
607
608 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 could C<< ->recv >> in your main program until the user clicks the Quit
611 button of your app, which would C<< ->send >> the "quit" event.
612
613 Note that condition variables recurse into the event loop - if you have
614 two pieces of code that call C<< ->recv >> in a round-robin fashion, you
615 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
619 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 its C<new> method in your own C<new> method.
624
625 There are two "sides" to a condition variable - the "producer side" which
626 eventually calls C<< -> send >>, and the "consumer side", which waits
627 for the send to occur.
628
629 Example: wait for a timer.
630
631 # condition: "wait till the timer is fired"
632 my $timer_fired = AnyEvent->condvar;
633
634 # create the timer - we could wait for, say
635 # a handle becomign ready, or even an
636 # AnyEvent::HTTP request to finish, but
637 # in this case, we simply use a timer:
638 my $w = AnyEvent->timer (
639 after => 1,
640 cb => sub { $timer_fired->send },
641 );
642
643 # this "blocks" (while handling events) till the callback
644 # calls ->send
645 $timer_fired->recv;
646
647 Example: wait for a timer, but take advantage of the fact that condition
648 variables are also callable directly.
649
650 my $done = AnyEvent->condvar;
651 my $delay = AnyEvent->timer (after => 5, cb => $done);
652 $done->recv;
653
654 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 And this is how you would just set a callback to be called whenever the
665 results are available:
666
667 $couchdb->info->cb (sub {
668 my @info = $_[0]->recv;
669 });
670
671 =head3 METHODS FOR PRODUCERS
672
673 These methods should only be used by the producing side, i.e. the
674 code/module that eventually sends the signal. Note that it is also
675 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
678 =over 4
679
680 =item $cv->send (...)
681
682 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 called. If nobody is waiting the send will be remembered.
685
686 If a callback has been set on the condition variable, it is called
687 immediately from within send.
688
689 Any arguments passed to the C<send> call will be returned by all
690 future C<< ->recv >> calls.
691
692 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
696 =item $cv->croak ($error)
697
698 Similar to send, but causes all calls to C<< ->recv >> to invoke
699 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 user/consumer. Doing it this way instead of calling C<croak> directly
703 delays the error detection, but has the overwhelming advantage that it
704 diagnoses the error at the place where the result is expected, and not
705 deep in some event callback with no connection to the actual code causing
706 the problem.
707
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 >>, 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
723 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 begun can potentially be zero:
754
755 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
756
757 my %result;
758 $cv->begin (sub { shift->send (\%result) });
759
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 C<send> after results for all then have have been gathered - in any
772 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 C<send> is called even when C<no> hosts are being pinged (the loop
781 doesn't execute once).
782
783 This is the general pattern when you "fan out" into multiple (but
784 potentially zero) subrequests: use an outer C<begin>/C<end> pair to set
785 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
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 =over 4
797
798 =item $cv->recv
799
800 Wait (blocking if necessary) until the C<< ->send >> or C<< ->croak
801 >> methods have been called on C<$cv>, while servicing other watchers
802 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
810 In list context, all parameters passed to C<send> will be returned,
811 in scalar context only the first one will be returned.
812
813 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 Not all event models support a blocking wait - some die in that case
821 (programs might want to do that to stay interactive), so I<if you are
822 using this from a module, never require a blocking wait>. Instead, let the
823 caller decide whether the call will block or not (for example, by coupling
824 condition variables with some kind of request results and supporting
825 callbacks so the caller knows that getting the result will not block,
826 while still supporting blocking waits if the caller so desires).
827
828 You can ensure that C<< ->recv >> never blocks by setting a callback and
829 only calling C<< ->recv >> from within that callback (or at a later
830 time). This will work even when the event loop does not support blocking
831 waits otherwise.
832
833 =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 =item $cb = $cv->cb ($cb->($cv))
839
840 This is a mutator function that returns the callback set and optionally
841 replaces it before doing so.
842
843 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
849 =back
850
851 =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 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
864 AnyEvent::Impl::EV based on EV (interface to libev, best choice).
865 AnyEvent::Impl::Perl pure-perl AnyEvent::Loop, fast and portable.
866
867 =item Backends that are transparently being picked up when they are used.
868
869 These will be used if they are already loaded when the first watcher
870 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 AnyEvent::Impl::Event based on Event, very stable, few glitches.
876 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 AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi used when running within irssi.
881 AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync based on IO::Async.
882 AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa based on Cocoa::EventLoop.
883 AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK2 based on FLTK (fltk 2 binding).
884
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 =head1 GLOBAL VARIABLES AND FUNCTIONS
915
916 These are not normally required to use AnyEvent, but can be useful to
917 write AnyEvent extension modules.
918
919 =over 4
920
921 =item $AnyEvent::MODEL
922
923 Contains C<undef> until the first watcher is being created, before the
924 backend has been autodetected.
925
926 Afterwards it contains the event model that is being used, which is the
927 name of the Perl class implementing the model. This class is usually one
928 of the C<AnyEvent::Impl::xxx> modules, but can be any other class in the
929 case AnyEvent has been extended at runtime (e.g. in I<rxvt-unicode> it
930 will be C<urxvt::anyevent>).
931
932 =item AnyEvent::detect
933
934 Returns C<$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 runtime, and not e.g. during initialisation of your module.
938
939 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 If you need to do some initialisation before AnyEvent watchers are
944 created, use C<post_detect>.
945
946 =item $guard = AnyEvent::post_detect { BLOCK }
947
948 Arranges for the code block to be executed as soon as the event model is
949 autodetected (or immediately if that has already happened).
950
951 The block will be executed I<after> the actual backend has been detected
952 (C<$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 If called in scalar or list context, then it creates and returns an object
963 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 C<$WATCHER>, but do so only do so after the event loop is initialised.
969
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 ||= $guard;
982
983 =item @AnyEvent::post_detect
984
985 If there are any code references in this array (you can C<push> to it
986 before or after loading AnyEvent), then they will be called directly
987 after the event loop has been chosen.
988
989 You should check C<$AnyEvent::MODEL> before adding to this array, though:
990 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 it, as it takes care of these details.
995
996 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
1001 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 =item AnyEvent::postpone { BLOCK }
1015
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 =item AnyEvent::log $level, $msg[, @args]
1055
1056 Log the given C<$msg> at the given C<$level>.
1057
1058 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 If the test fails it will simply return.
1064
1065 If you want to sprinkle loads of logging calls around your code, consider
1066 creating a logger callback with the C<AnyEvent::Log::logger> function,
1067 which can reduce typing, codesize and can reduce the logging overhead
1068 enourmously.
1069
1070 =back
1071
1072 =head1 WHAT TO DO IN A MODULE
1073
1074 As a module author, you should C<use AnyEvent> and call AnyEvent methods
1075 freely, but you should not load a specific event module or rely on it.
1076
1077 Be careful when you create watchers in the module body - AnyEvent will
1078 decide which event module to use as soon as the first method is called, so
1079 by calling AnyEvent in your module body you force the user of your module
1080 to load the event module first.
1081
1082 Never call C<< ->recv >> on a condition variable unless you I<know> that
1083 the C<< ->send >> method has been called on it already. This is
1084 because it will stall the whole program, and the whole point of using
1085 events is to stay interactive.
1086
1087 It is fine, however, to call C<< ->recv >> when the user of your module
1088 requests it (i.e. if you create a http request object ad have a method
1089 called C<results> that returns the results, it may call C<< ->recv >>
1090 freely, as the user of your module knows what she is doing. Always).
1091
1092 =head1 WHAT TO DO IN THE MAIN PROGRAM
1093
1094 There will always be a single main program - the only place that should
1095 dictate which event model to use.
1096
1097 If the program is not event-based, it need not do anything special, even
1098 when it depends on a module that uses an AnyEvent. If the program itself
1099 uses AnyEvent, but does not care which event loop is used, all it needs
1100 to do is C<use AnyEvent>. In either case, AnyEvent will choose the best
1101 available loop implementation.
1102
1103 If the main program relies on a specific event model - for example, in
1104 Gtk2 programs you have to rely on the Glib module - you should load the
1105 event module before loading AnyEvent or any module that uses it: generally
1106 speaking, you should load it as early as possible. The reason is that
1107 modules might create watchers when they are loaded, and AnyEvent will
1108 decide on the event model to use as soon as it creates watchers, and it
1109 might choose the wrong one unless you load the correct one yourself.
1110
1111 You can chose to use a pure-perl implementation by loading the
1112 C<AnyEvent::Loop> module, which gives you similar behaviour
1113 everywhere, but letting AnyEvent chose the model is generally better.
1114
1115 =head2 MAINLOOP EMULATION
1116
1117 Sometimes (often for short test scripts, or even standalone programs who
1118 only want to use AnyEvent), you do not want to run a specific event loop.
1119
1120 In that case, you can use a condition variable like this:
1121
1122 AnyEvent->condvar->recv;
1123
1124 This has the effect of entering the event loop and looping forever.
1125
1126 Note that usually your program has some exit condition, in which case
1127 it is better to use the "traditional" approach of storing a condition
1128 variable somewhere, waiting for it, and sending it when the program should
1129 exit cleanly.
1130
1131
1132 =head1 OTHER MODULES
1133
1134 The following is a non-exhaustive list of additional modules that use
1135 AnyEvent as a client and can therefore be mixed easily with other
1136 AnyEvent modules and other event loops in the same program. Some of the
1137 modules come as part of AnyEvent, the others are available via CPAN (see
1138 L<http://search.cpan.org/search?m=module&q=anyevent%3A%3A*> for
1139 a longer non-exhaustive list), and the list is heavily biased towards
1140 modules of the AnyEvent author himself :)
1141
1142 =over 4
1143
1144 =item L<AnyEvent::Util>
1145
1146 Contains various utility functions that replace often-used blocking
1147 functions such as C<inet_aton> with event/callback-based versions.
1148
1149 =item L<AnyEvent::Socket>
1150
1151 Provides various utility functions for (internet protocol) sockets,
1152 addresses and name resolution. Also functions to create non-blocking tcp
1153 connections or tcp servers, with IPv6 and SRV record support and more.
1154
1155 =item L<AnyEvent::Handle>
1156
1157 Provide read and write buffers, manages watchers for reads and writes,
1158 supports raw and formatted I/O, I/O queued and fully transparent and
1159 non-blocking SSL/TLS (via L<AnyEvent::TLS>).
1160
1161 =item L<AnyEvent::DNS>
1162
1163 Provides rich asynchronous DNS resolver capabilities.
1164
1165 =item L<AnyEvent::HTTP>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>, L<AnyEvent::XMPP>, L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IGS>, L<AnyEvent::FCP>
1166
1167 Implement event-based interfaces to the protocols of the same name (for
1168 the curious, IGS is the International Go Server and FCP is the Freenet
1169 Client Protocol).
1170
1171 =item L<AnyEvent::Handle::UDP>
1172
1173 Here be danger!
1174
1175 As Pauli would put it, "Not only is it not right, it's not even wrong!" -
1176 there are so many things wrong with AnyEvent::Handle::UDP, most notably
1177 its use of a stream-based API with a protocol that isn't streamable, that
1178 the only way to improve it is to delete it.
1179
1180 It features data corruption (but typically only under load) and general
1181 confusion. On top, the author is not only clueless about UDP but also
1182 fact-resistant - some gems of his understanding: "connect doesn't work
1183 with UDP", "UDP packets are not IP packets", "UDP only has datagrams, not
1184 packets", "I don't need to implement proper error checking as UDP doesn't
1185 support error checking" and so on - he doesn't even understand what's
1186 wrong with his module when it is explained to him.
1187
1188 =item L<AnyEvent::DBI>
1189
1190 Executes L<DBI> requests asynchronously in a proxy process for you,
1191 notifying you in an event-based way when the operation is finished.
1192
1193 =item L<AnyEvent::AIO>
1194
1195 Truly asynchronous (as opposed to non-blocking) I/O, should be in the
1196 toolbox of every event programmer. AnyEvent::AIO transparently fuses
1197 L<IO::AIO> and AnyEvent together, giving AnyEvent access to event-based
1198 file I/O, and much more.
1199
1200 =item L<AnyEvent::HTTPD>
1201
1202 A simple embedded webserver.
1203
1204 =item L<AnyEvent::FastPing>
1205
1206 The fastest ping in the west.
1207
1208 =item L<Coro>
1209
1210 Has special support for AnyEvent via L<Coro::AnyEvent>.
1211
1212 =back
1213
1214 =cut
1215
1216 package AnyEvent;
1217
1218 # basically a tuned-down version of common::sense
1219 sub common_sense {
1220 # from common:.sense 3.4
1221 ${^WARNING_BITS} ^= ${^WARNING_BITS} ^ "\x3c\x3f\x33\x00\x0f\xf0\x0f\xc0\xf0\xfc\x33\x00";
1222 # use strict vars subs - NO UTF-8, as Util.pm doesn't like this atm. (uts46data.pl)
1223 $^H |= 0x00000600;
1224 }
1225
1226 BEGIN { AnyEvent::common_sense }
1227
1228 use Carp ();
1229
1230 our $VERSION = '6.01';
1231 our $MODEL;
1232
1233 our @ISA;
1234
1235 our @REGISTRY;
1236
1237 our $VERBOSE;
1238
1239 BEGIN {
1240 require "AnyEvent/constants.pl";
1241
1242 eval "sub TAINT (){" . (${^TAINT}*1) . "}";
1243
1244 delete @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV}
1245 if ${^TAINT};
1246
1247 $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"} = $ENV{"AE_$_"}
1248 for grep s/^AE_// && !exists $ENV{"PERL_ANYEVENT_$_"}, keys %ENV;
1249
1250 @ENV{grep /^PERL_ANYEVENT_/, keys %ENV} = ()
1251 if ${^TAINT};
1252
1253 $VERBOSE = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}*1;
1254 }
1255
1256 our $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY = 10;
1257
1258 our %PROTOCOL; # (ipv4|ipv6) => (1|2), higher numbers are preferred
1259
1260 {
1261 my $idx;
1262 $PROTOCOL{$_} = ++$idx
1263 for reverse split /\s*,\s*/,
1264 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS} || "ipv4,ipv6";
1265 }
1266
1267 our @post_detect;
1268
1269 sub post_detect(&) {
1270 my ($cb) = @_;
1271
1272 push @post_detect, $cb;
1273
1274 defined wantarray
1275 ? bless \$cb, "AnyEvent::Util::postdetect"
1276 : ()
1277 }
1278
1279 sub AnyEvent::Util::postdetect::DESTROY {
1280 @post_detect = grep $_ != ${$_[0]}, @post_detect;
1281 }
1282
1283 our $POSTPONE_W;
1284 our @POSTPONE;
1285
1286 sub _postpone_exec {
1287 undef $POSTPONE_W;
1288
1289 &{ shift @POSTPONE }
1290 while @POSTPONE;
1291 }
1292
1293 sub postpone(&) {
1294 push @POSTPONE, shift;
1295
1296 $POSTPONE_W ||= AE::timer (0, 0, \&_postpone_exec);
1297
1298 ()
1299 }
1300
1301 sub log($$;@) {
1302 # only load the big bloated module when we actually are about to log something
1303 if ($_[0] <= $VERBOSE) { # also catches non-numeric levels(!)
1304 require AnyEvent::Log;
1305 # AnyEvent::Log overwrites this function
1306 goto &log;
1307 }
1308
1309 0 # not logged
1310 }
1311
1312 if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG}) {
1313 require AnyEvent::Log; # AnyEvent::Log does the thing for us
1314 }
1315
1316 our @models = (
1317 [EV:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EV:: , 1],
1318 [AnyEvent::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Perl:: , 1],
1319 # everything below here will not (normally) be autoprobed
1320 # as the pure perl backend should work everywhere
1321 # and is usually faster
1322 [Event:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Event::, 1],
1323 [Glib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Glib:: , 1], # becomes extremely slow with many watchers
1324 [Event::Lib:: => AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib::], # too buggy
1325 [Irssi:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Irssi::], # Irssi has a bogus "Event" package
1326 [Tk:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Tk::], # crashes with many handles
1327 [Qt:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Qt::], # requires special main program
1328 [POE::Kernel:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::], # lasciate ogni speranza
1329 [Wx:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1330 [Prima:: => AnyEvent::Impl::POE::],
1331 [IO::Async::Loop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync::], # a bitch to autodetect
1332 [Cocoa::EventLoop:: => AnyEvent::Impl::Cocoa::],
1333 [FLTK:: => AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK2::],
1334 );
1335
1336 our @isa_hook;
1337
1338 sub _isa_set {
1339 my @pkg = ("AnyEvent", (map $_->[0], grep defined, @isa_hook), $MODEL);
1340
1341 @{"$pkg[$_-1]::ISA"} = $pkg[$_]
1342 for 1 .. $#pkg;
1343
1344 grep $_ && $_->[1], @isa_hook
1345 and AE::_reset ();
1346 }
1347
1348 # used for hooking AnyEvent::Strict and AnyEvent::Debug::Wrap into the class hierarchy
1349 sub _isa_hook($$;$) {
1350 my ($i, $pkg, $reset_ae) = @_;
1351
1352 $isa_hook[$i] = $pkg ? [$pkg, $reset_ae] : undef;
1353
1354 _isa_set;
1355 }
1356
1357 # all autoloaded methods reserve the complete glob, not just the method slot.
1358 # due to bugs in perls method cache implementation.
1359 our @methods = qw(io timer time now now_update signal child idle condvar);
1360
1361 sub detect() {
1362 return $MODEL if $MODEL; # some programs keep references to detect
1363
1364 local $!; # for good measure
1365 local $SIG{__DIE__}; # we use eval
1366
1367 # free some memory
1368 *detect = sub () { $MODEL };
1369 # undef &func doesn't correctly update the method cache. grmbl.
1370 # so we delete the whole glob. grmbl.
1371 # otoh, perl doesn't let me undef an active usb, but it lets me free
1372 # a glob with an active sub. hrm. i hope it works, but perl is
1373 # usually buggy in this department. sigh.
1374 delete @{"AnyEvent::"}{@methods};
1375 undef @methods;
1376
1377 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} =~ /^([a-zA-Z0-9:]+)$/) {
1378 my $model = $1;
1379 $model = "AnyEvent::Impl::$model" unless $model =~ s/::$//;
1380 if (eval "require $model") {
1381 AnyEvent::log 7 => "loaded model '$model' (forced by \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}), using it.";
1382 $MODEL = $model;
1383 } else {
1384 AnyEvent::log 5 => "unable to load model '$model' (from \$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}):\n$@";
1385 }
1386 }
1387
1388 # check for already loaded models
1389 unless ($MODEL) {
1390 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1391 my ($package, $model) = @$_;
1392 if (${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0) {
1393 if (eval "require $model") {
1394 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autodetected model '$model', using it.";
1395 $MODEL = $model;
1396 last;
1397 }
1398 }
1399 }
1400
1401 unless ($MODEL) {
1402 # try to autoload a model
1403 for (@REGISTRY, @models) {
1404 my ($package, $model, $autoload) = @$_;
1405 if (
1406 $autoload
1407 and eval "require $package"
1408 and ${"$package\::VERSION"} > 0
1409 and eval "require $model"
1410 ) {
1411 AnyEvent::log 7 => "autoloaded model '$model', using it.";
1412 $MODEL = $model;
1413 last;
1414 }
1415 }
1416
1417 $MODEL
1418 or die "AnyEvent: backend autodetection failed - did you properly install AnyEvent?";
1419 }
1420 }
1421
1422 # free memory only needed for probing
1423 undef @models;
1424 undef @REGISTRY;
1425
1426 push @{"$MODEL\::ISA"}, "AnyEvent::Base";
1427
1428 # now nuke some methods that are overridden by the backend.
1429 # SUPER usage is not allowed in these.
1430 for (qw(time signal child idle)) {
1431 undef &{"AnyEvent::Base::$_"}
1432 if defined &{"$MODEL\::$_"};
1433 }
1434
1435 _isa_set;
1436
1437 # we're officially open!
1438
1439 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}) {
1440 require AnyEvent::Strict;
1441 }
1442
1443 if ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP}) {
1444 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1445 AnyEvent::Debug::wrap ($ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP});
1446 }
1447
1448 if (length $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL}) {
1449 require AnyEvent::Socket;
1450 require AnyEvent::Debug;
1451
1452 my $shell = $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL};
1453 $shell =~ s/\$\$/$$/g;
1454
1455 my ($host, $service) = AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport ($shell);
1456 $AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL = AnyEvent::Debug::shell ($host, $service);
1457 }
1458
1459 # now the anyevent environment is set up as the user told us to, so
1460 # call the actual user code - post detects
1461
1462 (shift @post_detect)->() while @post_detect;
1463 undef @post_detect;
1464
1465 *post_detect = sub(&) {
1466 shift->();
1467
1468 undef
1469 };
1470
1471 $MODEL
1472 }
1473
1474 for my $name (@methods) {
1475 *$name = sub {
1476 detect;
1477 # we use goto because
1478 # a) it makes the thunk more transparent
1479 # b) it allows us to delete the thunk later
1480 goto &{ UNIVERSAL::can AnyEvent => "SUPER::$name" }
1481 };
1482 }
1483
1484 # utility function to dup a filehandle. this is used by many backends
1485 # to support binding more than one watcher per filehandle (they usually
1486 # allow only one watcher per fd, so we dup it to get a different one).
1487 sub _dupfh($$;$$) {
1488 my ($poll, $fh, $r, $w) = @_;
1489
1490 # cygwin requires the fh mode to be matching, unix doesn't
1491 my ($rw, $mode) = $poll eq "r" ? ($r, "<&") : ($w, ">&");
1492
1493 open my $fh2, $mode, $fh
1494 or die "AnyEvent->io: cannot dup() filehandle in mode '$poll': $!,";
1495
1496 # we assume CLOEXEC is already set by perl in all important cases
1497
1498 ($fh2, $rw)
1499 }
1500
1501 =head1 SIMPLIFIED AE API
1502
1503 Starting with version 5.0, AnyEvent officially supports a second, much
1504 simpler, API that is designed to reduce the calling, typing and memory
1505 overhead by using function call syntax and a fixed number of parameters.
1506
1507 See the L<AE> manpage for details.
1508
1509 =cut
1510
1511 package AE;
1512
1513 our $VERSION = $AnyEvent::VERSION;
1514
1515 sub _reset() {
1516 eval q{
1517 # fall back to the main API by default - backends and AnyEvent::Base
1518 # implementations can overwrite these.
1519
1520 sub io($$$) {
1521 AnyEvent->io (fh => $_[0], poll => $_[1] ? "w" : "r", cb => $_[2])
1522 }
1523
1524 sub timer($$$) {
1525 AnyEvent->timer (after => $_[0], interval => $_[1], cb => $_[2])
1526 }
1527
1528 sub signal($$) {
1529 AnyEvent->signal (signal => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1530 }
1531
1532 sub child($$) {
1533 AnyEvent->child (pid => $_[0], cb => $_[1])
1534 }
1535
1536 sub idle($) {
1537 AnyEvent->idle (cb => $_[0]);
1538 }
1539
1540 sub cv(;&) {
1541 AnyEvent->condvar (@_ ? (cb => $_[0]) : ())
1542 }
1543
1544 sub now() {
1545 AnyEvent->now
1546 }
1547
1548 sub now_update() {
1549 AnyEvent->now_update
1550 }
1551
1552 sub time() {
1553 AnyEvent->time
1554 }
1555
1556 *postpone = \&AnyEvent::postpone;
1557 *log = \&AnyEvent::log;
1558 };
1559 die if $@;
1560 }
1561
1562 BEGIN { _reset }
1563
1564 package AnyEvent::Base;
1565
1566 # default implementations for many methods
1567
1568 sub time {
1569 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1570 # probe for availability of Time::HiRes
1571 if (eval "use Time::HiRes (); Time::HiRes::time (); 1") {
1572 *time = sub { Time::HiRes::time () };
1573 *AE::time = \& Time::HiRes::time ;
1574 *now = \&time;
1575 AnyEvent::log 8 => "AnyEvent: using Time::HiRes for sub-second timing accuracy.";
1576 # if (eval "use POSIX (); (POSIX::times())...
1577 } else {
1578 *time = sub { CORE::time };
1579 *AE::time = sub (){ CORE::time };
1580 *now = \&time;
1581 AnyEvent::log 3 => "using built-in time(), WARNING, no sub-second resolution!";
1582 }
1583 };
1584 die if $@;
1585
1586 &time
1587 }
1588
1589 *now = \&time;
1590 sub now_update { }
1591
1592 sub _poll {
1593 Carp::croak "$AnyEvent::MODEL does not support blocking waits. Caught";
1594 }
1595
1596 # default implementation for ->condvar
1597 # in fact, the default should not be overwritten
1598
1599 sub condvar {
1600 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1601 *condvar = sub {
1602 bless { @_ == 3 ? (_ae_cb => $_[2]) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1603 };
1604
1605 *AE::cv = sub (;&) {
1606 bless { @_ ? (_ae_cb => shift) : () }, "AnyEvent::CondVar"
1607 };
1608 };
1609 die if $@;
1610
1611 &condvar
1612 }
1613
1614 # default implementation for ->signal
1615
1616 our $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1617
1618 sub _have_async_interrupt() {
1619 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT = 1*(!$ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT}
1620 && eval "use Async::Interrupt 1.02 (); 1")
1621 unless defined $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT;
1622
1623 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1624 }
1625
1626 our ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W, %SIG_CB, %SIG_EV, $SIG_IO);
1627 our (%SIG_ASY, %SIG_ASY_W);
1628 our ($SIG_COUNT, $SIG_TW);
1629
1630 # install a dummy wakeup watcher to reduce signal catching latency
1631 # used by Impls
1632 sub _sig_add() {
1633 unless ($SIG_COUNT++) {
1634 # try to align timer on a full-second boundary, if possible
1635 my $NOW = AE::now;
1636
1637 $SIG_TW = AE::timer
1638 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY - ($NOW - int $NOW),
1639 $MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY,
1640 sub { } # just for the PERL_ASYNC_CHECK
1641 ;
1642 }
1643 }
1644
1645 sub _sig_del {
1646 undef $SIG_TW
1647 unless --$SIG_COUNT;
1648 }
1649
1650 our $_sig_name_init; $_sig_name_init = sub {
1651 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1652 undef $_sig_name_init;
1653
1654 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1655 *sig2num = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2num;
1656 *sig2name = \&Async::Interrupt::sig2name;
1657 } else {
1658 require Config;
1659
1660 my %signame2num;
1661 @signame2num{ split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_name} }
1662 = split ' ', $Config::Config{sig_num};
1663
1664 my @signum2name;
1665 @signum2name[values %signame2num] = keys %signame2num;
1666
1667 *sig2num = sub($) {
1668 $_[0] > 0 ? shift : $signame2num{+shift}
1669 };
1670 *sig2name = sub ($) {
1671 $_[0] > 0 ? $signum2name[+shift] : shift
1672 };
1673 }
1674 };
1675 die if $@;
1676 };
1677
1678 sub sig2num ($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2num }
1679 sub sig2name($) { &$_sig_name_init; &sig2name }
1680
1681 sub signal {
1682 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1683 # probe for availability of Async::Interrupt
1684 if (_have_async_interrupt) {
1685 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using Async::Interrupt for race-free signal handling.";
1686
1687 $SIGPIPE_R = new Async::Interrupt::EventPipe;
1688 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R->fileno, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1689
1690 } else {
1691 AnyEvent::log 8 => "using emulated perl signal handling with latency timer.";
1692
1693 if (AnyEvent::WIN32) {
1694 require AnyEvent::Util;
1695
1696 ($SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W) = AnyEvent::Util::portable_pipe ();
1697 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_R, 1) if $SIGPIPE_R;
1698 AnyEvent::Util::fh_nonblocking ($SIGPIPE_W, 1) if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1699 } else {
1700 pipe $SIGPIPE_R, $SIGPIPE_W;
1701 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_R;
1702 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFL, AnyEvent::O_NONBLOCK if $SIGPIPE_W; # just in case
1703
1704 # not strictly required, as $^F is normally 2, but let's make sure...
1705 fcntl $SIGPIPE_R, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1706 fcntl $SIGPIPE_W, AnyEvent::F_SETFD, AnyEvent::FD_CLOEXEC;
1707 }
1708
1709 $SIGPIPE_R
1710 or Carp::croak "AnyEvent: unable to create a signal reporting pipe: $!\n";
1711
1712 $SIG_IO = AE::io $SIGPIPE_R, 0, \&_signal_exec;
1713 }
1714
1715 *signal = $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1716 ? sub {
1717 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1718
1719 # async::interrupt
1720 my $signal = sig2num $arg{signal};
1721 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1722
1723 $SIG_ASY{$signal} ||= new Async::Interrupt
1724 cb => sub { undef $SIG_EV{$signal} },
1725 signal => $signal,
1726 pipe => [$SIGPIPE_R->filenos],
1727 pipe_autodrain => 0,
1728 ;
1729
1730 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1731 }
1732 : sub {
1733 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1734
1735 # pure perl
1736 my $signal = sig2name $arg{signal};
1737 $SIG_CB{$signal}{$arg{cb}} = $arg{cb};
1738
1739 $SIG{$signal} ||= sub {
1740 local $!;
1741 syswrite $SIGPIPE_W, "\x00", 1 unless %SIG_EV;
1742 undef $SIG_EV{$signal};
1743 };
1744
1745 # can't do signal processing without introducing races in pure perl,
1746 # so limit the signal latency.
1747 _sig_add;
1748
1749 bless [$signal, $arg{cb}], "AnyEvent::Base::signal"
1750 }
1751 ;
1752
1753 *AnyEvent::Base::signal::DESTROY = sub {
1754 my ($signal, $cb) = @{$_[0]};
1755
1756 _sig_del;
1757
1758 delete $SIG_CB{$signal}{$cb};
1759
1760 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1761 ? delete $SIG_ASY{$signal}
1762 : # delete doesn't work with older perls - they then
1763 # print weird messages, or just unconditionally exit
1764 # instead of getting the default action.
1765 undef $SIG{$signal}
1766 unless keys %{ $SIG_CB{$signal} };
1767 };
1768
1769 *_signal_exec = sub {
1770 $HAVE_ASYNC_INTERRUPT
1771 ? $SIGPIPE_R->drain
1772 : sysread $SIGPIPE_R, (my $dummy), 9;
1773
1774 while (%SIG_EV) {
1775 for (keys %SIG_EV) {
1776 delete $SIG_EV{$_};
1777 &$_ for values %{ $SIG_CB{$_} || {} };
1778 }
1779 }
1780 };
1781 };
1782 die if $@;
1783
1784 &signal
1785 }
1786
1787 # default implementation for ->child
1788
1789 our %PID_CB;
1790 our $CHLD_W;
1791 our $CHLD_DELAY_W;
1792
1793 # used by many Impl's
1794 sub _emit_childstatus($$) {
1795 my (undef, $rpid, $rstatus) = @_;
1796
1797 $_->($rpid, $rstatus)
1798 for values %{ $PID_CB{$rpid} || {} },
1799 values %{ $PID_CB{0} || {} };
1800 }
1801
1802 sub child {
1803 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1804 *_sigchld = sub {
1805 my $pid;
1806
1807 AnyEvent->_emit_childstatus ($pid, $?)
1808 while ($pid = waitpid -1, WNOHANG) > 0;
1809 };
1810
1811 *child = sub {
1812 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1813
1814 my $pid = $arg{pid};
1815 my $cb = $arg{cb};
1816
1817 $PID_CB{$pid}{$cb+0} = $cb;
1818
1819 unless ($CHLD_W) {
1820 $CHLD_W = AE::signal CHLD => \&_sigchld;
1821 # child could be a zombie already, so make at least one round
1822 &_sigchld;
1823 }
1824
1825 bless [$pid, $cb+0], "AnyEvent::Base::child"
1826 };
1827
1828 *AnyEvent::Base::child::DESTROY = sub {
1829 my ($pid, $icb) = @{$_[0]};
1830
1831 delete $PID_CB{$pid}{$icb};
1832 delete $PID_CB{$pid} unless keys %{ $PID_CB{$pid} };
1833
1834 undef $CHLD_W unless keys %PID_CB;
1835 };
1836 };
1837 die if $@;
1838
1839 &child
1840 }
1841
1842 # idle emulation is done by simply using a timer, regardless
1843 # of whether the process is idle or not, and not letting
1844 # the callback use more than 50% of the time.
1845 sub idle {
1846 eval q{ # poor man's autoloading {}
1847 *idle = sub {
1848 my (undef, %arg) = @_;
1849
1850 my ($cb, $w, $rcb) = $arg{cb};
1851
1852 $rcb = sub {
1853 if ($cb) {
1854 $w = AE::time;
1855 &$cb;
1856 $w = AE::time - $w;
1857
1858 # never use more then 50% of the time for the idle watcher,
1859 # within some limits
1860 $w = 0.0001 if $w < 0.0001;
1861 $w = 5 if $w > 5;
1862
1863 $w = AE::timer $w, 0, $rcb;
1864 } else {
1865 # clean up...
1866 undef $w;
1867 undef $rcb;
1868 }
1869 };
1870
1871 $w = AE::timer 0.05, 0, $rcb;
1872
1873 bless \\$cb, "AnyEvent::Base::idle"
1874 };
1875
1876 *AnyEvent::Base::idle::DESTROY = sub {
1877 undef $${$_[0]};
1878 };
1879 };
1880 die if $@;
1881
1882 &idle
1883 }
1884
1885 package AnyEvent::CondVar;
1886
1887 our @ISA = AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::;
1888
1889 # only to be used for subclassing
1890 sub new {
1891 my $class = shift;
1892 bless AnyEvent->condvar (@_), $class
1893 }
1894
1895 package AnyEvent::CondVar::Base;
1896
1897 #use overload
1898 # '&{}' => sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } },
1899 # fallback => 1;
1900
1901 # save 300+ kilobytes by dirtily hardcoding overloading
1902 ${"AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::OVERLOAD"}{dummy}++; # Register with magic by touching.
1903 *{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = sub { }; # "Make it findable via fetchmethod."
1904 *{'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::(&{}'} = sub { my $self = shift; sub { $self->send (@_) } }; # &{}
1905 ${'AnyEvent::CondVar::Base::()'} = 1; # fallback
1906
1907 our $WAITING;
1908
1909 sub _send {
1910 # nop
1911 }
1912
1913 sub _wait {
1914 AnyEvent->_poll until $_[0]{_ae_sent};
1915 }
1916
1917 sub send {
1918 my $cv = shift;
1919 $cv->{_ae_sent} = [@_];
1920 (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv) if $cv->{_ae_cb};
1921 $cv->_send;
1922 }
1923
1924 sub croak {
1925 $_[0]{_ae_croak} = $_[1];
1926 $_[0]->send;
1927 }
1928
1929 sub ready {
1930 $_[0]{_ae_sent}
1931 }
1932
1933 sub recv {
1934 unless ($_[0]{_ae_sent}) {
1935 $WAITING
1936 and Carp::croak "AnyEvent::CondVar: recursive blocking wait attempted";
1937
1938 local $WAITING = 1;
1939 $_[0]->_wait;
1940 }
1941
1942 $_[0]{_ae_croak}
1943 and Carp::croak $_[0]{_ae_croak};
1944
1945 wantarray
1946 ? @{ $_[0]{_ae_sent} }
1947 : $_[0]{_ae_sent}[0]
1948 }
1949
1950 sub cb {
1951 my $cv = shift;
1952
1953 @_
1954 and $cv->{_ae_cb} = shift
1955 and $cv->{_ae_sent}
1956 and (delete $cv->{_ae_cb})->($cv);
1957
1958 $cv->{_ae_cb}
1959 }
1960
1961 sub begin {
1962 ++$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1963 $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} = $_[1] if @_ > 1;
1964 }
1965
1966 sub end {
1967 return if --$_[0]{_ae_counter};
1968 &{ $_[0]{_ae_end_cb} || sub { $_[0]->send } };
1969 }
1970
1971 # undocumented/compatibility with pre-3.4
1972 *broadcast = \&send;
1973 *wait = \&recv;
1974
1975 =head1 ERROR AND EXCEPTION HANDLING
1976
1977 In general, AnyEvent does not do any error handling - it relies on the
1978 caller to do that if required. The L<AnyEvent::Strict> module (see also
1979 the C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT> environment variable, below) provides strict
1980 checking of all AnyEvent methods, however, which is highly useful during
1981 development.
1982
1983 As for exception handling (i.e. runtime errors and exceptions thrown while
1984 executing a callback), this is not only highly event-loop specific, but
1985 also not in any way wrapped by this module, as this is the job of the main
1986 program.
1987
1988 The pure perl event loop simply re-throws the exception (usually
1989 within C<< condvar->recv >>), the L<Event> and L<EV> modules call C<<
1990 $Event/EV::DIED->() >>, L<Glib> uses C<< install_exception_handler >> and
1991 so on.
1992
1993 =head1 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
1994
1995 AnyEvent supports a number of environment variables that tune the
1996 runtime behaviour. They are usually evaluated when AnyEvent is
1997 loaded, initialised, or a submodule that uses them is loaded. Many of
1998 them also cause AnyEvent to load additional modules - for example,
1999 C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP> causes the L<AnyEvent::Debug> module to be
2000 loaded.
2001
2002 All the environment variables documented here start with
2003 C<PERL_ANYEVENT_>, which is what AnyEvent considers its own
2004 namespace. Other modules are encouraged (but by no means required) to use
2005 C<PERL_ANYEVENT_SUBMODULE> if they have registered the AnyEvent::Submodule
2006 namespace on CPAN, for any submodule. For example, L<AnyEvent::HTTP> could
2007 be expected to use C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HTTP_PROXY> (it should not access env
2008 variables starting with C<AE_>, see below).
2009
2010 All variables can also be set via the C<AE_> prefix, that is, instead
2011 of setting C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> you can also set C<AE_VERBOSE>. In
2012 case there is a clash btween anyevent and another program that uses
2013 C<AE_something> you can set the corresponding C<PERL_ANYEVENT_something>
2014 variable to the empty string, as those variables take precedence.
2015
2016 When AnyEvent is first loaded, it copies all C<AE_xxx> env variables
2017 to their C<PERL_ANYEVENT_xxx> counterpart unless that variable already
2018 exists. If taint mode is on, then AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment
2019 variables starting with C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> (or replace them
2020 with C<undef> or the empty string, if the corresaponding C<AE_> variable
2021 is set).
2022
2023 The exact algorithm is currently:
2024
2025 1. if taint mode enabled, delete all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables from %ENV
2026 2. copy over AE_xyz to PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz unless the latter alraedy exists
2027 3. if taint mode enabled, set all PERL_ANYEVENT_xyz variables to undef.
2028
2029 This ensures that child processes will not see the C<AE_> variables.
2030
2031 The following environment variables are currently known to AnyEvent:
2032
2033 =over 4
2034
2035 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE>
2036
2037 By default, AnyEvent will be completely silent except in fatal
2038 conditions. You can set this environment variable to make AnyEvent more
2039 talkative. If you want to do more than just set the global logging level
2040 you should have a look at C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>, which allows much more
2041 complex specifications.
2042
2043 When set to C<5> or higher (warn), causes AnyEvent to warn about unexpected
2044 conditions, such as not being able to load the event model specified by
2045 C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>, or a guard callback throwing an exception - this
2046 is the minimum recommended level.
2047
2048 When set to C<7> or higher (info), cause AnyEvent to report which event model it
2049 chooses.
2050
2051 When set to C<8> or higher (debug), then AnyEvent will report extra information on
2052 which optional modules it loads and how it implements certain features.
2053
2054 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG>
2055
2056 Accepts rather complex logging specifications. For example, you could log
2057 all C<debug> messages of some module to stderr, warnings and above to
2058 stderr, and errors and above to syslog, with:
2059
2060 PERL_ANYEVENT_LOG=Some::Module=debug,+log:filter=warn,+%syslog:%syslog=error,syslog
2061
2062 For the rather extensive details, see L<AnyEvent::Log>.
2063
2064 This variable is evaluated when AnyEvent (or L<AnyEvent::Log>) is loaded,
2065 so will take effect even before AnyEvent has initialised itself.
2066
2067 Note that specifying this environment variable causes the L<AnyEvent::Log>
2068 module to be loaded, while C<PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE> does not, so only
2069 using the latter saves a few hundred kB of memory until the first message
2070 is being logged.
2071
2072 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT>
2073
2074 AnyEvent does not do much argument checking by default, as thorough
2075 argument checking is very costly. Setting this variable to a true value
2076 will cause AnyEvent to load C<AnyEvent::Strict> and then to thoroughly
2077 check the arguments passed to most method calls. If it finds any problems,
2078 it will croak.
2079
2080 In other words, enables "strict" mode.
2081
2082 Unlike C<use strict> (or its modern cousin, C<< use L<common::sense>
2083 >>, it is definitely recommended to keep it off in production. Keeping
2084 C<PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT=1> in your environment while developing programs
2085 can be very useful, however.
2086
2087 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL>
2088
2089 If this env variable is set, then its contents will be interpreted by
2090 C<AnyEvent::Socket::parse_hostport> (after replacing every occurance of
2091 C<$$> by the process pid) and an C<AnyEvent::Debug::shell> is bound on
2092 that port. The shell object is saved in C<$AnyEvent::Debug::SHELL>.
2093
2094 This happens when the first watcher is created.
2095
2096 For example, to bind a debug shell on a unix domain socket in
2097 F<< /tmp/debug<pid>.sock >>, you could use this:
2098
2099 PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_SHELL=/tmp/debug\$\$.sock perlprog
2100
2101 Note that creating sockets in F</tmp> is very unsafe on multiuser
2102 systems.
2103
2104 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_DEBUG_WRAP>
2105
2106 Can be set to C<0>, C<1> or C<2> and enables wrapping of all watchers for
2107 debugging purposes. See C<AnyEvent::Debug::wrap> for details.
2108
2109 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL>
2110
2111 This can be used to specify the event model to be used by AnyEvent, before
2112 auto detection and -probing kicks in.
2113
2114 It normally is a string consisting entirely of ASCII letters (e.g. C<EV>
2115 or C<IOAsync>). The string C<AnyEvent::Impl::> gets prepended and the
2116 resulting module name is loaded and - if the load was successful - used as
2117 event model backend. If it fails to load then AnyEvent will proceed with
2118 auto detection and -probing.
2119
2120 If the string ends with C<::> instead (e.g. C<AnyEvent::Impl::EV::>) then
2121 nothing gets prepended and the module name is used as-is (hint: C<::> at
2122 the end of a string designates a module name and quotes it appropriately).
2123
2124 For example, to force the pure perl model (L<AnyEvent::Loop::Perl>) you
2125 could start your program like this:
2126
2127 PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL=Perl perl ...
2128
2129 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS>
2130
2131 Used by both L<AnyEvent::DNS> and L<AnyEvent::Socket> to determine preferences
2132 for IPv4 or IPv6. The default is unspecified (and might change, or be the result
2133 of auto probing).
2134
2135 Must be set to a comma-separated list of protocols or address families,
2136 current supported: C<ipv4> and C<ipv6>. Only protocols mentioned will be
2137 used, and preference will be given to protocols mentioned earlier in the
2138 list.
2139
2140 This variable can effectively be used for denial-of-service attacks
2141 against local programs (e.g. when setuid), although the impact is likely
2142 small, as the program has to handle conenction and other failures anyways.
2143
2144 Examples: C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4,ipv6> - prefer IPv4 over IPv6,
2145 but support both and try to use both. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv4>
2146 - only support IPv4, never try to resolve or contact IPv6
2147 addresses. C<PERL_ANYEVENT_PROTOCOLS=ipv6,ipv4> support either IPv4 or
2148 IPv6, but prefer IPv6 over IPv4.
2149
2150 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_HOSTS>
2151
2152 This variable, if specified, overrides the F</etc/hosts> file used by
2153 L<AnyEvent::Socket>C<::resolve_sockaddr>, i.e. hosts aliases will be read
2154 from that file instead.
2155
2156 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_EDNS0>
2157
2158 Used by L<AnyEvent::DNS> to decide whether to use the EDNS0 extension for
2159 DNS. This extension is generally useful to reduce DNS traffic, especially
2160 when DNSSEC is involved, but some (broken) firewalls drop such DNS
2161 packets, which is why it is off by default.
2162
2163 Setting this variable to C<1> will cause L<AnyEvent::DNS> to announce
2164 EDNS0 in its DNS requests.
2165
2166 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_FORKS>
2167
2168 The maximum number of child processes that C<AnyEvent::Util::fork_call>
2169 will create in parallel.
2170
2171 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_MAX_OUTSTANDING_DNS>
2172
2173 The default value for the C<max_outstanding> parameter for the default DNS
2174 resolver - this is the maximum number of parallel DNS requests that are
2175 sent to the DNS server.
2176
2177 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_RESOLV_CONF>
2178
2179 The absolute path to a F<resolv.conf>-style file to use instead of
2180 F</etc/resolv.conf> (or the OS-specific configuration) in the default
2181 resolver, or the empty string to select the default configuration.
2182
2183 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_FILE>, C<PERL_ANYEVENT_CA_PATH>.
2184
2185 When neither C<ca_file> nor C<ca_path> was specified during
2186 L<AnyEvent::TLS> context creation, and either of these environment
2187 variables are nonempty, they will be used to specify CA certificate
2188 locations instead of a system-dependent default.
2189
2190 =item C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_GUARD> and C<PERL_ANYEVENT_AVOID_ASYNC_INTERRUPT>
2191
2192 When these are set to C<1>, then the respective modules are not
2193 loaded. Mostly good for testing AnyEvent itself.
2194
2195 =back
2196
2197 =head1 SUPPLYING YOUR OWN EVENT MODEL INTERFACE
2198
2199 This is an advanced topic that you do not normally need to use AnyEvent in
2200 a module. This section is only of use to event loop authors who want to
2201 provide AnyEvent compatibility.
2202
2203 If you need to support another event library which isn't directly
2204 supported by AnyEvent, you can supply your own interface to it by
2205 pushing, before the first watcher gets created, the package name of
2206 the event module and the package name of the interface to use onto
2207 C<@AnyEvent::REGISTRY>. You can do that before and even without loading
2208 AnyEvent, so it is reasonably cheap.
2209
2210 Example:
2211
2212 push @AnyEvent::REGISTRY, [urxvt => urxvt::anyevent::];
2213
2214 This tells AnyEvent to (literally) use the C<urxvt::anyevent::>
2215 package/class when it finds the C<urxvt> package/module is already loaded.
2216
2217 When AnyEvent is loaded and asked to find a suitable event model, it
2218 will first check for the presence of urxvt by trying to C<use> the
2219 C<urxvt::anyevent> module.
2220
2221 The class should provide implementations for all watcher types. See
2222 L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV> (source code), L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> (Source code)
2223 and so on for actual examples. Use C<perldoc -m AnyEvent::Impl::Glib> to
2224 see the sources.
2225
2226 If you don't provide C<signal> and C<child> watchers than AnyEvent will
2227 provide suitable (hopefully) replacements.
2228
2229 The above example isn't fictitious, the I<rxvt-unicode> (a.k.a. urxvt)
2230 terminal emulator uses the above line as-is. An interface isn't included
2231 in AnyEvent because it doesn't make sense outside the embedded interpreter
2232 inside I<rxvt-unicode>, and it is updated and maintained as part of the
2233 I<rxvt-unicode> distribution.
2234
2235 I<rxvt-unicode> also cheats a bit by not providing blocking access to
2236 condition variables: code blocking while waiting for a condition will
2237 C<die>. This still works with most modules/usages, and blocking calls must
2238 not be done in an interactive application, so it makes sense.
2239
2240 =head1 EXAMPLE PROGRAM
2241
2242 The following program uses an I/O watcher to read data from STDIN, a timer
2243 to display a message once per second, and a condition variable to quit the
2244 program when the user enters quit:
2245
2246 use AnyEvent;
2247
2248 my $cv = AnyEvent->condvar;
2249
2250 my $io_watcher = AnyEvent->io (
2251 fh => \*STDIN,
2252 poll => 'r',
2253 cb => sub {
2254 warn "io event <$_[0]>\n"; # will always output <r>
2255 chomp (my $input = <STDIN>); # read a line
2256 warn "read: $input\n"; # output what has been read
2257 $cv->send if $input =~ /^q/i; # quit program if /^q/i
2258 },
2259 );
2260
2261 my $time_watcher = AnyEvent->timer (after => 1, interval => 1, cb => sub {
2262 warn "timeout\n"; # print 'timeout' at most every second
2263 });
2264
2265 $cv->recv; # wait until user enters /^q/i
2266
2267 =head1 REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE
2268
2269 Consider the L<Net::FCP> module. It features (among others) the following
2270 API calls, which are to freenet what HTTP GET requests are to http:
2271
2272 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url); # blocks
2273
2274 my $transaction = $fcp->txn_client_get ($url); # does not block
2275 $transaction->cb ( sub { ... } ); # set optional result callback
2276 my $data = $transaction->result; # possibly blocks
2277
2278 The C<client_get> method works like C<LWP::Simple::get>: it requests the
2279 given URL and waits till the data has arrived. It is defined to be:
2280
2281 sub client_get { $_[0]->txn_client_get ($_[1])->result }
2282
2283 And in fact is automatically generated. This is the blocking API of
2284 L<Net::FCP>, and it works as simple as in any other, similar, module.
2285
2286 More complicated is C<txn_client_get>: It only creates a transaction
2287 (completion, result, ...) object and initiates the transaction.
2288
2289 my $txn = bless { }, Net::FCP::Txn::;
2290
2291 It also creates a condition variable that is used to signal the completion
2292 of the request:
2293
2294 $txn->{finished} = AnyAvent->condvar;
2295
2296 It then creates a socket in non-blocking mode.
2297
2298 socket $txn->{fh}, ...;
2299 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, O_NONBLOCK;
2300 connect $txn->{fh}, ...
2301 and !$!{EWOULDBLOCK}
2302 and !$!{EINPROGRESS}
2303 and Carp::croak "unable to connect: $!\n";
2304
2305 Then it creates a write-watcher which gets called whenever an error occurs
2306 or the connection succeeds:
2307
2308 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'w', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_w });
2309
2310 And returns this transaction object. The C<fh_ready_w> callback gets
2311 called as soon as the event loop detects that the socket is ready for
2312 writing.
2313
2314 The C<fh_ready_w> method makes the socket blocking again, writes the
2315 request data and replaces the watcher by a read watcher (waiting for reply
2316 data). The actual code is more complicated, but that doesn't matter for
2317 this example:
2318
2319 fcntl $txn->{fh}, F_SETFL, 0;
2320 syswrite $txn->{fh}, $txn->{request}
2321 or die "connection or write error";
2322 $txn->{w} = AnyEvent->io (fh => $txn->{fh}, poll => 'r', cb => sub { $txn->fh_ready_r });
2323
2324 Again, C<fh_ready_r> waits till all data has arrived, and then stores the
2325 result and signals any possible waiters that the request has finished:
2326
2327 sysread $txn->{fh}, $txn->{buf}, length $txn->{$buf};
2328
2329 if (end-of-file or data complete) {
2330 $txn->{result} = $txn->{buf};
2331 $txn->{finished}->send;
2332 $txb->{cb}->($txn) of $txn->{cb}; # also call callback
2333 }
2334
2335 The C<result> method, finally, just waits for the finished signal (if the
2336 request was already finished, it doesn't wait, of course, and returns the
2337 data:
2338
2339 $txn->{finished}->recv;
2340 return $txn->{result};
2341
2342 The actual code goes further and collects all errors (C<die>s, exceptions)
2343 that occurred during request processing. The C<result> method detects
2344 whether an exception as thrown (it is stored inside the $txn object)
2345 and just throws the exception, which means connection errors and other
2346 problems get reported to the code that tries to use the result, not in a
2347 random callback.
2348
2349 All of this enables the following usage styles:
2350
2351 1. Blocking:
2352
2353 my $data = $fcp->client_get ($url);
2354
2355 2. Blocking, but running in parallel:
2356
2357 my @datas = map $_->result,
2358 map $fcp->txn_client_get ($_),
2359 @urls;
2360
2361 Both blocking examples work without the module user having to know
2362 anything about events.
2363
2364 3a. Event-based in a main program, using any supported event module:
2365
2366 use EV;
2367
2368 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2369 my $txn = shift;
2370 my $data = $txn->result;
2371 ...
2372 });
2373
2374 EV::loop;
2375
2376 3b. The module user could use AnyEvent, too:
2377
2378 use AnyEvent;
2379
2380 my $quit = AnyEvent->condvar;
2381
2382 $fcp->txn_client_get ($url)->cb (sub {
2383 ...
2384 $quit->send;
2385 });
2386
2387 $quit->recv;
2388
2389
2390 =head1 BENCHMARKS
2391
2392 To give you an idea of the performance and overheads that AnyEvent adds
2393 over the event loops themselves and to give you an impression of the speed
2394 of various event loops I prepared some benchmarks.
2395
2396 =head2 BENCHMARKING ANYEVENT OVERHEAD
2397
2398 Here is a benchmark of various supported event models used natively and
2399 through AnyEvent. The benchmark creates a lot of timers (with a zero
2400 timeout) and I/O watchers (watching STDOUT, a pty, to become writable,
2401 which it is), lets them fire exactly once and destroys them again.
2402
2403 Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench> in the AnyEvent
2404 distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2405 for the EV and Perl backends only.
2406
2407 =head3 Explanation of the columns
2408
2409 I<watcher> is the number of event watchers created/destroyed. Since
2410 different event models feature vastly different performances, each event
2411 loop was given a number of watchers so that overall runtime is acceptable
2412 and similar between tested event loop (and keep them from crashing): Glib
2413 would probably take thousands of years if asked to process the same number
2414 of watchers as EV in this benchmark.
2415
2416 I<bytes> is the number of bytes (as measured by the resident set size,
2417 RSS) consumed by each watcher. This method of measuring captures both C
2418 and Perl-based overheads.
2419
2420 I<create> is the time, in microseconds (millionths of seconds), that it
2421 takes to create a single watcher. The callback is a closure shared between
2422 all watchers, to avoid adding memory overhead. That means closure creation
2423 and memory usage is not included in the figures.
2424
2425 I<invoke> is the time, in microseconds, used to invoke a simple
2426 callback. The callback simply counts down a Perl variable and after it was
2427 invoked "watcher" times, it would C<< ->send >> a condvar once to
2428 signal the end of this phase.
2429
2430 I<destroy> is the time, in microseconds, that it takes to destroy a single
2431 watcher.
2432
2433 =head3 Results
2434
2435 name watchers bytes create invoke destroy comment
2436 EV/EV 100000 223 0.47 0.43 0.27 EV native interface
2437 EV/Any 100000 223 0.48 0.42 0.26 EV + AnyEvent watchers
2438 Coro::EV/Any 100000 223 0.47 0.42 0.26 coroutines + Coro::Signal
2439 Perl/Any 100000 431 2.70 0.74 0.92 pure perl implementation
2440 Event/Event 16000 516 31.16 31.84 0.82 Event native interface
2441 Event/Any 16000 1203 42.61 34.79 1.80 Event + AnyEvent watchers
2442 IOAsync/Any 16000 1911 41.92 27.45 16.81 via IO::Async::Loop::IO_Poll
2443 IOAsync/Any 16000 1726 40.69 26.37 15.25 via IO::Async::Loop::Epoll
2444 Glib/Any 16000 1118 89.00 12.57 51.17 quadratic behaviour
2445 Tk/Any 2000 1346 20.96 10.75 8.00 SEGV with >> 2000 watchers
2446 POE/Any 2000 6951 108.97 795.32 14.24 via POE::Loop::Event
2447 POE/Any 2000 6648 94.79 774.40 575.51 via POE::Loop::Select
2448
2449 =head3 Discussion
2450
2451 The benchmark does I<not> measure scalability of the event loop very
2452 well. For example, a select-based event loop (such as the pure perl one)
2453 can never compete with an event loop that uses epoll when the number of
2454 file descriptors grows high. In this benchmark, all events become ready at
2455 the same time, so select/poll-based implementations get an unnatural speed
2456 boost.
2457
2458 Also, note that the number of watchers usually has a nonlinear effect on
2459 overall speed, that is, creating twice as many watchers doesn't take twice
2460 the time - usually it takes longer. This puts event loops tested with a
2461 higher number of watchers at a disadvantage.
2462
2463 To put the range of results into perspective, consider that on the
2464 benchmark machine, handling an event takes roughly 1600 CPU cycles with
2465 EV, 3100 CPU cycles with AnyEvent's pure perl loop and almost 3000000 CPU
2466 cycles with POE.
2467
2468 C<EV> is the sole leader regarding speed and memory use, which are both
2469 maximal/minimal, respectively. When using the L<AE> API there is zero
2470 overhead (when going through the AnyEvent API create is about 5-6 times
2471 slower, with other times being equal, so still uses far less memory than
2472 any other event loop and is still faster than Event natively).
2473
2474 The pure perl implementation is hit in a few sweet spots (both the
2475 constant timeout and the use of a single fd hit optimisations in the perl
2476 interpreter and the backend itself). Nevertheless this shows that it
2477 adds very little overhead in itself. Like any select-based backend its
2478 performance becomes really bad with lots of file descriptors (and few of
2479 them active), of course, but this was not subject of this benchmark.
2480
2481 The C<Event> module has a relatively high setup and callback invocation
2482 cost, but overall scores in on the third place.
2483
2484 C<IO::Async> performs admirably well, about on par with C<Event>, even
2485 when using its pure perl backend.
2486
2487 C<Glib>'s memory usage is quite a bit higher, but it features a
2488 faster callback invocation and overall ends up in the same class as
2489 C<Event>. However, Glib scales extremely badly, doubling the number of
2490 watchers increases the processing time by more than a factor of four,
2491 making it completely unusable when using larger numbers of watchers
2492 (note that only a single file descriptor was used in the benchmark, so
2493 inefficiencies of C<poll> do not account for this).
2494
2495 The C<Tk> adaptor works relatively well. The fact that it crashes with
2496 more than 2000 watchers is a big setback, however, as correctness takes
2497 precedence over speed. Nevertheless, its performance is surprising, as the
2498 file descriptor is dup()ed for each watcher. This shows that the dup()
2499 employed by some adaptors is not a big performance issue (it does incur a
2500 hidden memory cost inside the kernel which is not reflected in the figures
2501 above).
2502
2503 C<POE>, regardless of underlying event loop (whether using its pure perl
2504 select-based backend or the Event module, the POE-EV backend couldn't
2505 be tested because it wasn't working) shows abysmal performance and
2506 memory usage with AnyEvent: Watchers use almost 30 times as much memory
2507 as EV watchers, and 10 times as much memory as Event (the high memory
2508 requirements are caused by requiring a session for each watcher). Watcher
2509 invocation speed is almost 900 times slower than with AnyEvent's pure perl
2510 implementation.
2511
2512 The design of the POE adaptor class in AnyEvent can not really account
2513 for the performance issues, though, as session creation overhead is
2514 small compared to execution of the state machine, which is coded pretty
2515 optimally within L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE> (and while everybody agrees that
2516 using multiple sessions is not a good approach, especially regarding
2517 memory usage, even the author of POE could not come up with a faster
2518 design).
2519
2520 =head3 Summary
2521
2522 =over 4
2523
2524 =item * Using EV through AnyEvent is faster than any other event loop
2525 (even when used without AnyEvent), but most event loops have acceptable
2526 performance with or without AnyEvent.
2527
2528 =item * The overhead AnyEvent adds is usually much smaller than the overhead of
2529 the actual event loop, only with extremely fast event loops such as EV
2530 does AnyEvent add significant overhead.
2531
2532 =item * You should avoid POE like the plague if you want performance or
2533 reasonable memory usage.
2534
2535 =back
2536
2537 =head2 BENCHMARKING THE LARGE SERVER CASE
2538
2539 This benchmark actually benchmarks the event loop itself. It works by
2540 creating a number of "servers": each server consists of a socket pair, a
2541 timeout watcher that gets reset on activity (but never fires), and an I/O
2542 watcher waiting for input on one side of the socket. Each time the socket
2543 watcher reads a byte it will write that byte to a random other "server".
2544
2545 The effect is that there will be a lot of I/O watchers, only part of which
2546 are active at any one point (so there is a constant number of active
2547 fds for each loop iteration, but which fds these are is random). The
2548 timeout is reset each time something is read because that reflects how
2549 most timeouts work (and puts extra pressure on the event loops).
2550
2551 In this benchmark, we use 10000 socket pairs (20000 sockets), of which 100
2552 (1%) are active. This mirrors the activity of large servers with many
2553 connections, most of which are idle at any one point in time.
2554
2555 Source code for this benchmark is found as F<eg/bench2> in the AnyEvent
2556 distribution. It uses the L<AE> interface, which makes a real difference
2557 for the EV and Perl backends only.
2558
2559 =head3 Explanation of the columns
2560
2561 I<sockets> is the number of sockets, and twice the number of "servers" (as
2562 each server has a read and write socket end).
2563
2564 I<create> is the time it takes to create a socket pair (which is
2565 nontrivial) and two watchers: an I/O watcher and a timeout watcher.
2566
2567 I<request>, the most important value, is the time it takes to handle a
2568 single "request", that is, reading the token from the pipe and forwarding
2569 it to another server. This includes deleting the old timeout and creating
2570 a new one that moves the timeout into the future.
2571
2572 =head3 Results
2573
2574 name sockets create request
2575 EV 20000 62.66 7.99
2576 Perl 20000 68.32 32.64
2577 IOAsync 20000 174.06 101.15 epoll
2578 IOAsync 20000 174.67 610.84 poll
2579 Event 20000 202.69 242.91
2580 Glib 20000 557.01 1689.52
2581 POE 20000 341.54 12086.32 uses POE::Loop::Event
2582
2583 =head3 Discussion
2584
2585 This benchmark I<does> measure scalability and overall performance of the
2586 particular event loop.
2587
2588 EV is again fastest. Since it is using epoll on my system, the setup time
2589 is relatively high, though.
2590
2591 Perl surprisingly comes second. It is much faster than the C-based event
2592 loops Event and Glib.
2593
2594 IO::Async performs very well when using its epoll backend, and still quite
2595 good compared to Glib when using its pure perl backend.
2596
2597 Event suffers from high setup time as well (look at its code and you will
2598 understand why). Callback invocation also has a high overhead compared to
2599 the C<< $_->() for .. >>-style loop that the Perl event loop uses. Event
2600 uses select or poll in basically all documented configurations.
2601
2602 Glib is hit hard by its quadratic behaviour w.r.t. many watchers. It
2603 clearly fails to perform with many filehandles or in busy servers.
2604
2605 POE is still completely out of the picture, taking over 1000 times as long
2606 as EV, and over 100 times as long as the Perl implementation, even though
2607 it uses a C-based event loop in this case.
2608
2609 =head3 Summary
2610
2611 =over 4
2612
2613 =item * The pure perl implementation performs extremely well.
2614
2615 =item * Avoid Glib or POE in large projects where performance matters.
2616
2617 =back
2618
2619 =head2 BENCHMARKING SMALL SERVERS
2620
2621 While event loops should scale (and select-based ones do not...) even to
2622 large servers, most programs we (or I :) actually write have only a few
2623 I/O watchers.
2624
2625 In this benchmark, I use the same benchmark program as in the large server
2626 case, but it uses only eight "servers", of which three are active at any
2627 one time. This should reflect performance for a small server relatively
2628 well.
2629
2630 The columns are identical to the previous table.
2631
2632 =head3 Results
2633
2634 name sockets create request
2635 EV 16 20.00 6.54
2636 Perl 16 25.75 12.62
2637 Event 16 81.27 35.86
2638 Glib 16 32.63 15.48
2639 POE 16 261.87 276.28 uses POE::Loop::Event
2640
2641 =head3 Discussion
2642
2643 The benchmark tries to test the performance of a typical small
2644 server. While knowing how various event loops perform is interesting, keep
2645 in mind that their overhead in this case is usually not as important, due
2646 to the small absolute number of watchers (that is, you need efficiency and
2647 speed most when you have lots of watchers, not when you only have a few of
2648 them).
2649
2650 EV is again fastest.
2651
2652 Perl again comes second. It is noticeably faster than the C-based event
2653 loops Event and Glib, although the difference is too small to really
2654 matter.
2655
2656 POE also performs much better in this case, but is is still far behind the
2657 others.
2658
2659 =head3 Summary
2660
2661 =over 4
2662
2663 =item * C-based event loops perform very well with small number of
2664 watchers, as the management overhead dominates.
2665
2666 =back
2667
2668 =head2 THE IO::Lambda BENCHMARK
2669
2670 Recently I was told about the benchmark in the IO::Lambda manpage, which
2671 could be misinterpreted to make AnyEvent look bad. In fact, the benchmark
2672 simply compares IO::Lambda with POE, and IO::Lambda looks better (which
2673 shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody). As such, the benchmark is
2674 fine, and mostly shows that the AnyEvent backend from IO::Lambda isn't
2675 very optimal. But how would AnyEvent compare when used without the extra
2676 baggage? To explore this, I wrote the equivalent benchmark for AnyEvent.
2677
2678 The benchmark itself creates an echo-server, and then, for 500 times,
2679 connects to the echo server, sends a line, waits for the reply, and then
2680 creates the next connection. This is a rather bad benchmark, as it doesn't
2681 test the efficiency of the framework or much non-blocking I/O, but it is a
2682 benchmark nevertheless.
2683
2684 name runtime
2685 Lambda/select 0.330 sec
2686 + optimized 0.122 sec
2687 Lambda/AnyEvent 0.327 sec
2688 + optimized 0.138 sec
2689 Raw sockets/select 0.077 sec
2690 POE/select, components 0.662 sec
2691 POE/select, raw sockets 0.226 sec
2692 POE/select, optimized 0.404 sec
2693
2694 AnyEvent/select/nb 0.085 sec
2695 AnyEvent/EV/nb 0.068 sec
2696 +state machine 0.134 sec
2697
2698 The benchmark is also a bit unfair (my fault): the IO::Lambda/POE
2699 benchmarks actually make blocking connects and use 100% blocking I/O,
2700 defeating the purpose of an event-based solution. All of the newly
2701 written AnyEvent benchmarks use 100% non-blocking connects (using
2702 AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect and the asynchronous pure perl DNS
2703 resolver), so AnyEvent is at a disadvantage here, as non-blocking connects
2704 generally require a lot more bookkeeping and event handling than blocking
2705 connects (which involve a single syscall only).
2706
2707 The last AnyEvent benchmark additionally uses L<AnyEvent::Handle>, which
2708 offers similar expressive power as POE and IO::Lambda, using conventional
2709 Perl syntax. This means that both the echo server and the client are 100%
2710 non-blocking, further placing it at a disadvantage.
2711
2712 As you can see, the AnyEvent + EV combination even beats the
2713 hand-optimised "raw sockets benchmark", while AnyEvent + its pure perl
2714 backend easily beats IO::Lambda and POE.
2715
2716 And even the 100% non-blocking version written using the high-level (and
2717 slow :) L<AnyEvent::Handle> abstraction beats both POE and IO::Lambda
2718 higher level ("unoptimised") abstractions by a large margin, even though
2719 it does all of DNS, tcp-connect and socket I/O in a non-blocking way.
2720
2721 The two AnyEvent benchmarks programs can be found as F<eg/ae0.pl> and
2722 F<eg/ae2.pl> in the AnyEvent distribution, the remaining benchmarks are
2723 part of the IO::Lambda distribution and were used without any changes.
2724
2725
2726 =head1 SIGNALS
2727
2728 AnyEvent currently installs handlers for these signals:
2729
2730 =over 4
2731
2732 =item SIGCHLD
2733
2734 A handler for C<SIGCHLD> is installed by AnyEvent's child watcher
2735 emulation for event loops that do not support them natively. Also, some
2736 event loops install a similar handler.
2737
2738 Additionally, when AnyEvent is loaded and SIGCHLD is set to IGNORE, then
2739 AnyEvent will reset it to default, to avoid losing child exit statuses.
2740
2741 =item SIGPIPE
2742
2743 A no-op handler is installed for C<SIGPIPE> when C<$SIG{PIPE}> is C<undef>
2744 when AnyEvent gets loaded.
2745
2746 The rationale for this is that AnyEvent users usually do not really depend
2747 on SIGPIPE delivery (which is purely an optimisation for shell use, or
2748 badly-written programs), but C<SIGPIPE> can cause spurious and rare
2749 program exits as a lot of people do not expect C<SIGPIPE> when writing to
2750 some random socket.
2751
2752 The rationale for installing a no-op handler as opposed to ignoring it is
2753 that this way, the handler will be restored to defaults on exec.
2754
2755 Feel free to install your own handler, or reset it to defaults.
2756
2757 =back
2758
2759 =cut
2760
2761 undef $SIG{CHLD}
2762 if $SIG{CHLD} eq 'IGNORE';
2763
2764 $SIG{PIPE} = sub { }
2765 unless defined $SIG{PIPE};
2766
2767 =head1 RECOMMENDED/OPTIONAL MODULES
2768
2769 One of AnyEvent's main goals is to be 100% Pure-Perl(tm): only perl (and
2770 its built-in modules) are required to use it.
2771
2772 That does not mean that AnyEvent won't take advantage of some additional
2773 modules if they are installed.
2774
2775 This section explains which additional modules will be used, and how they
2776 affect AnyEvent's operation.
2777
2778 =over 4
2779
2780 =item L<Async::Interrupt>
2781
2782 This slightly arcane module is used to implement fast signal handling: To
2783 my knowledge, there is no way to do completely race-free and quick
2784 signal handling in pure perl. To ensure that signals still get
2785 delivered, AnyEvent will start an interval timer to wake up perl (and
2786 catch the signals) with some delay (default is 10 seconds, look for
2787 C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>).
2788
2789 If this module is available, then it will be used to implement signal
2790 catching, which means that signals will not be delayed, and the event loop
2791 will not be interrupted regularly, which is more efficient (and good for
2792 battery life on laptops).
2793
2794 This affects not just the pure-perl event loop, but also other event loops
2795 that have no signal handling on their own (e.g. Glib, Tk, Qt).
2796
2797 Some event loops (POE, Event, Event::Lib) offer signal watchers natively,
2798 and either employ their own workarounds (POE) or use AnyEvent's workaround
2799 (using C<$AnyEvent::MAX_SIGNAL_LATENCY>). Installing L<Async::Interrupt>
2800 does nothing for those backends.
2801
2802 =item L<EV>
2803
2804 This module isn't really "optional", as it is simply one of the backend
2805 event loops that AnyEvent can use. However, it is simply the best event
2806 loop available in terms of features, speed and stability: It supports
2807 the AnyEvent API optimally, implements all the watcher types in XS, does
2808 automatic timer adjustments even when no monotonic clock is available,
2809 can take avdantage of advanced kernel interfaces such as C<epoll> and
2810 C<kqueue>, and is the fastest backend I<by far>. You can even embed
2811 L<Glib>/L<Gtk2> in it (or vice versa, see L<EV::Glib> and L<Glib::EV>).
2812
2813 If you only use backends that rely on another event loop (e.g. C<Tk>),
2814 then this module will do nothing for you.
2815
2816 =item L<Guard>
2817
2818 The guard module, when used, will be used to implement
2819 C<AnyEvent::Util::guard>. This speeds up guards considerably (and uses a
2820 lot less memory), but otherwise doesn't affect guard operation much. It is
2821 purely used for performance.
2822
2823 =item L<JSON> and L<JSON::XS>
2824
2825 One of these modules is required when you want to read or write JSON data
2826 via L<AnyEvent::Handle>. L<JSON> is also written in pure-perl, but can take
2827 advantage of the ultra-high-speed L<JSON::XS> module when it is installed.
2828
2829 =item L<Net::SSLeay>
2830
2831 Implementing TLS/SSL in Perl is certainly interesting, but not very
2832 worthwhile: If this module is installed, then L<AnyEvent::Handle> (with
2833 the help of L<AnyEvent::TLS>), gains the ability to do TLS/SSL.
2834
2835 =item L<Time::HiRes>
2836
2837 This module is part of perl since release 5.008. It will be used when the
2838 chosen event library does not come with a timing source of its own. The
2839 pure-perl event loop (L<AnyEvent::Loop>) will additionally load it to
2840 try to use a monotonic clock for timing stability.
2841
2842 =back
2843
2844
2845 =head1 FORK
2846
2847 Most event libraries are not fork-safe. The ones who are usually are
2848 because they rely on inefficient but fork-safe C<select> or C<poll> calls
2849 - higher performance APIs such as BSD's kqueue or the dreaded Linux epoll
2850 are usually badly thought-out hacks that are incompatible with fork in
2851 one way or another. Only L<EV> is fully fork-aware and ensures that you
2852 continue event-processing in both parent and child (or both, if you know
2853 what you are doing).
2854
2855 This means that, in general, you cannot fork and do event processing in
2856 the child if the event library was initialised before the fork (which
2857 usually happens when the first AnyEvent watcher is created, or the library
2858 is loaded).
2859
2860 If you have to fork, you must either do so I<before> creating your first
2861 watcher OR you must not use AnyEvent at all in the child OR you must do
2862 something completely out of the scope of AnyEvent.
2863
2864 The problem of doing event processing in the parent I<and> the child
2865 is much more complicated: even for backends that I<are> fork-aware or
2866 fork-safe, their behaviour is not usually what you want: fork clones all
2867 watchers, that means all timers, I/O watchers etc. are active in both
2868 parent and child, which is almost never what you want. USing C<exec>
2869 to start worker children from some kind of manage rprocess is usually
2870 preferred, because it is much easier and cleaner, at the expense of having
2871 to have another binary.
2872
2873
2874 =head1 SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
2875
2876 AnyEvent can be forced to load any event model via
2877 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL}. While this cannot (to my knowledge) be used to
2878 execute arbitrary code or directly gain access, it can easily be used to
2879 make the program hang or malfunction in subtle ways, as AnyEvent watchers
2880 will not be active when the program uses a different event model than
2881 specified in the variable.
2882
2883 You can make AnyEvent completely ignore this variable by deleting it
2884 before the first watcher gets created, e.g. with a C<BEGIN> block:
2885
2886 BEGIN { delete $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL} }
2887
2888 use AnyEvent;
2889
2890 Similar considerations apply to $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_VERBOSE}, as that can
2891 be used to probe what backend is used and gain other information (which is
2892 probably even less useful to an attacker than PERL_ANYEVENT_MODEL), and
2893 $ENV{PERL_ANYEVENT_STRICT}.
2894
2895 Note that AnyEvent will remove I<all> environment variables starting with
2896 C<PERL_ANYEVENT_> from C<%ENV> when it is loaded while taint mode is
2897 enabled.
2898
2899
2900 =head1 BUGS
2901
2902 Perl 5.8 has numerous memleaks that sometimes hit this module and are hard
2903 to work around. If you suffer from memleaks, first upgrade to Perl 5.10
2904 and check wether the leaks still show up. (Perl 5.10.0 has other annoying
2905 memleaks, such as leaking on C<map> and C<grep> but it is usually not as
2906 pronounced).
2907
2908
2909 =head1 SEE ALSO
2910
2911 Tutorial/Introduction: L<AnyEvent::Intro>.
2912
2913 FAQ: L<AnyEvent::FAQ>.
2914
2915 Utility functions: L<AnyEvent::Util> (misc. grab-bag), L<AnyEvent::Log>
2916 (simply logging).
2917
2918 Development/Debugging: L<AnyEvent::Strict> (stricter checking),
2919 L<AnyEvent::Debug> (interactive shell, watcher tracing).
2920
2921 Supported event modules: L<AnyEvent::Loop>, L<EV>, L<EV::Glib>,
2922 L<Glib::EV>, L<Event>, L<Glib::Event>, L<Glib>, L<Tk>, L<Event::Lib>,
2923 L<Qt>, L<POE>, L<FLTK>.
2924
2925 Implementations: L<AnyEvent::Impl::EV>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Event>,
2926 L<AnyEvent::Impl::Glib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Tk>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Perl>,
2927 L<AnyEvent::Impl::EventLib>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::Qt>,
2928 L<AnyEvent::Impl::POE>, L<AnyEvent::Impl::IOAsync>, L<Anyevent::Impl::Irssi>,
2929 L<AnyEvent::Impl::FLTK>.
2930
2931 Non-blocking handles, pipes, stream sockets, TCP clients and
2932 servers: L<AnyEvent::Handle>, L<AnyEvent::Socket>, L<AnyEvent::TLS>.
2933
2934 Asynchronous DNS: L<AnyEvent::DNS>.
2935
2936 Thread support: L<Coro>, L<Coro::AnyEvent>, L<Coro::EV>, L<Coro::Event>.
2937
2938 Nontrivial usage examples: L<AnyEvent::GPSD>, L<AnyEvent::IRC>,
2939 L<AnyEvent::HTTP>.
2940
2941
2942 =head1 AUTHOR
2943
2944 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
2945 http://home.schmorp.de/
2946
2947 =cut
2948
2949 1
2950