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Revision: 1.14
Committed: Sat Aug 11 00:37:32 2001 UTC (22 years, 10 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.13: +1 -1 lines
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# Content
1 =head1 NAME
2
3 Coro::State - create and manage simple coroutines
4
5 =head1 SYNOPSIS
6
7 use Coro::State;
8
9 $new = new Coro::State sub {
10 print "in coroutine (called with @_), switching back\n";
11 $new->transfer($main);
12 print "in coroutine again, switching back\n";
13 $new->transfer($main);
14 }, 5;
15
16 $main = new Coro::State;
17
18 print "in main, switching to coroutine\n";
19 $main->transfer($new);
20 print "back in main, switch to coroutine again\n";
21 $main->transfer($new);
22 print "back in main\n";
23
24 =head1 DESCRIPTION
25
26 This module implements coroutines. Coroutines, similar to continuations,
27 allow you to run more than one "thread of execution" in parallel. Unlike
28 threads this, only voluntary switching is used so locking problems are
29 greatly reduced.
30
31 This module provides only low-level functionality. See L<Coro> and related
32 modules for a more useful process abstraction including scheduling.
33
34 =head2 MEMORY CONSUMPTION
35
36 A newly created coroutine that has not been used only allocates a
37 relatively small (a few hundred bytes) structure. Only on the first
38 C<transfer> will perl stacks (a few k) and optionally C stack (4-16k) be
39 allocated. On systems supporting mmap a 128k stack is allocated, on the
40 assumption that the OS has on-demand virtual memory. All this is very
41 system-dependent. On my i686-pc-linux-gnu system this amounts to about 10k
42 per coroutine, 5k when the experimental context sharing is enabled.
43
44 =over 4
45
46 =cut
47
48 package Coro::State;
49
50 BEGIN {
51 $VERSION = 0.45;
52
53 require XSLoader;
54 XSLoader::load Coro::State, $VERSION;
55 }
56
57 use base 'Exporter';
58
59 @EXPORT_OK = qw(SAVE_DEFAV SAVE_DEFSV SAVE_ERRSV SAVE_CCTXT);
60
61 =item $coro = new [$coderef] [, @args...]
62
63 Create a new coroutine and return it. The first C<transfer> call to this
64 coroutine will start execution at the given coderef. If the subroutine
65 returns it will be executed again.
66
67 If the coderef is omitted this function will create a new "empty"
68 coroutine, i.e. a coroutine that cannot be transfered to but can be used
69 to save the current coroutine in.
70
71 =cut
72
73 # this is called (or rather: goto'ed) for each and every
74 # new coroutine. IT MUST NEVER RETURN and should not call
75 # anything that changes the stacklevel (like eval).
76 sub initialize {
77 my $proc = shift;
78 eval {
79 &$proc while 1;
80 };
81 if ($@) {
82 print STDERR "FATAL: uncaught exception\n$@";
83 }
84 _exit 255;
85 }
86
87 sub new {
88 my $class = shift;
89 my $proc = shift || sub { die "tried to transfer to an empty coroutine" };
90 bless _newprocess [$proc, @_], $class;
91 }
92
93 =item $prev->transfer($next,$flags)
94
95 Save the state of the current subroutine in C<$prev> and switch to the
96 coroutine saved in C<$next>.
97
98 The "state" of a subroutine includes the scope, i.e. lexical variables and
99 the current execution state. The C<$flags> value can be used to specify
100 that additional state be saved (and later restored), by C<||>-ing the
101 following constants together:
102
103 Constant Effect
104 SAVE_DEFAV save/restore @_
105 SAVE_DEFSV save/restore $_
106 SAVE_ERRSV save/restore $@
107 SAVE_CCTXT save/restore C-stack (you usually want this)
108
109 These constants are not exported by default.
110
111 If you feel that something important is missing then tell me. Also
112 remember that every function call that might call C<transfer> (such
113 as C<Coro::Channel::put>) might clobber any global and/or special
114 variables. Yes, this is by design ;) You can always create your own
115 process abstraction model that saves these variables.
116
117 The easiest way to do this is to create your own scheduling primitive like
118 this:
119
120 sub schedule {
121 local ($_, $@, ...);
122 $old->transfer($new);
123 }
124
125 IMPLEMENTORS NOTE: all Coro::State functions/methods expect either the
126 usual Coro::State object or a hashref with a key named "_coro_state" that
127 contains the real Coro::State object. That is, you can do:
128
129 $obj->{_coro_state} = new Coro::State ...;
130 Coro::State::transfer(..., $obj);
131
132 This exists mainly to ease subclassing (wether through @ISA or not).
133
134 =cut
135
136 =item Coro::State::flush
137
138 To be efficient (actually, to not be abysmaly slow), this module does
139 some fair amount of caching (a possibly complex structure for every
140 subroutine in use). If you don't use coroutines anymore or you want to
141 reclaim some memory then you can call this function which will flush all
142 internal caches. The caches will be rebuilt when needed so this is a safe
143 operation.
144
145 =cut
146
147 1;
148
149 =back
150
151 =head1 BUGS
152
153 This module has not yet been extensively tested. Expect segfaults and
154 specially memleaks.
155
156 This module is not thread-safe. You must only ever use this module from
157 the same thread (this requirenmnt might be loosened in the future).
158
159 =head1 SEE ALSO
160
161 L<Coro>.
162
163 =head1 AUTHOR
164
165 Marc Lehmann <pcg@goof.com>
166 http://www.goof.com/pcg/marc/
167
168 =cut
169