=head1 NAME Coro::State - create and manage simple coroutines =head1 SYNOPSIS use Coro::State; $new = new Coro::State sub { print "in coroutine (called with @_), switching back\n"; $new->transfer($main); print "in coroutine again, switching back\n"; $new->transfer($main); }, 5; $main = new Coro::State; print "in main, switching to coroutine\n"; $main->transfer($new); print "back in main, switch to coroutine again\n"; $main->transfer($new); print "back in main\n"; =head1 DESCRIPTION This module implements coroutines. Coroutines, similar to continuations, allow you to run more than one "thread of execution" in parallel. Unlike threads this, only voluntary switching is used so locking problems are greatly reduced. This module provides only low-level functionality. See L and related modules for a more useful process abstraction including scheduling. =over 4 =cut package Coro::State; BEGIN { $VERSION = 0.10; require XSLoader; XSLoader::load Coro::State, $VERSION; } use base 'Exporter'; @EXPORT_OK = qw(SAVE_DEFAV SAVE_DEFSV SAVE_ERRSV); =item $coro = new [$coderef] [, @args...] Create a new coroutine and return it. The first C call to this coroutine will start execution at the given coderef. If, the subroutine returns it will be executed again. The coderef you submit MUST NOT be a closure that refers to variables in an outer scope. This does NOT work. If the coderef is omitted this function will create a new "empty" coroutine, i.e. a coroutine that cannot be transfered to but can be used to save the current coroutine in. =cut sub initialize { my $proc = shift; do { eval { &$proc }; if ($@) { my $err = $@; $error->(undef, $err); print STDERR "FATAL: error function returned\n"; exit(50); } } while (1); } sub new { my $class = shift; my $proc = shift || sub { die "tried to transfer to an empty coroutine" }; bless _newprocess [$proc, @_], $class; } =item $prev->transfer($next,[$flags]) Save the state of the current subroutine in C<$prev> and switch to the coroutine saved in C<$next>. The "state" of a subroutine includes the scope, i.e. lexical variables and the current execution state. The C<$flags> value can be used to specify that additional state be saved (and later restored), by C<||>-ing the following constants together: Constant Effect SAVE_DEFAV save/restore @_ SAVE_DEFSV save/restore $_ SAVE_ERRSV save/restore $@ These constants are not exported by default. The default is subject to change (because we are still at an early development stage) but will stabilize. If you feel that something important is missing then tell me. Also remember that every function call that might call C (such as C) might clobber any global and/or special variables. Yes, this is by design ;) You can always create your own process abstraction model that saves these variables. The easiest way to do this is to create your own scheduling primitive like this: sub schedule { local ($_, $@, ...); $old->transfer($new); } IMPLEMENTORS NOTE: all Coro::State functions/methods expect either the usual Coro::State object or a hashref with a key named "_coro_state" that contains the real Coro::State object. That is, you can do: $obj->{_coro_state} = new Coro::State ...; Coro::State::transfer(..., $obj); This exists mainly to ease subclassing (wether through @ISA or not). =cut =item $error->($error_coro, $error_msg) This function will be called on fatal errors. C<$error_msg> and C<$error_coro> return the error message and the error-causing coroutine (NOT an object) respectively. This API might change. =cut $error = sub { print STDERR "FATAL: $_[1]\n"; exit 51; }; =item Coro::State::flush To be efficient (actually, to not be abysmaly slow), this module does some fair amount of caching (a possibly complex structure for every subroutine in use). If you don't use coroutines anymore or you want to reclaim some memory then you can call this function which will flush all internal caches. The caches will be rebuilt when needed so this is a safe operation. =cut 1; =back =head1 BUGS This module has not yet been extensively tested. Expect segfaults and specially memleaks. This module is not thread-safe. You must only ever use this module from the same thread (this requirenmnt might be loosened in the future). =head1 SEE ALSO L. =head1 AUTHOR Marc Lehmann http://www.goof.com/pcg/marc/ =cut