ViewVC Help
View File | Revision Log | Show Annotations | Download File
/cvs/IO-AIO/README
Revision: 1.47
Committed: Fri May 27 00:44:49 2011 UTC (13 years ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: rel-3_9
Changes since 1.46: +30 -13 lines
Log Message:
3.9

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 root 1.1 NAME
2     IO::AIO - Asynchronous Input/Output
3    
4     SYNOPSIS
5     use IO::AIO;
6    
7 root 1.44 aio_open "/etc/passwd", IO::AIO::O_RDONLY, 0, sub {
8 root 1.21 my $fh = shift
9     or die "/etc/passwd: $!";
10 root 1.5 ...
11     };
12    
13     aio_unlink "/tmp/file", sub { };
14    
15     aio_read $fh, 30000, 1024, $buffer, 0, sub {
16     $_[0] > 0 or die "read error: $!";
17     };
18    
19 root 1.18 # version 2+ has request and group objects
20     use IO::AIO 2;
21    
22     aioreq_pri 4; # give next request a very high priority
23     my $req = aio_unlink "/tmp/file", sub { };
24     $req->cancel; # cancel request if still in queue
25    
26     my $grp = aio_group sub { print "all stats done\n" };
27     add $grp aio_stat "..." for ...;
28    
29 root 1.1 DESCRIPTION
30     This module implements asynchronous I/O using whatever means your
31 root 1.38 operating system supports. It is implemented as an interface to "libeio"
32     (<http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/libeio.html>).
33 root 1.1
34 root 1.19 Asynchronous means that operations that can normally block your program
35     (e.g. reading from disk) will be done asynchronously: the operation will
36     still block, but you can do something else in the meantime. This is
37     extremely useful for programs that need to stay interactive even when
38     doing heavy I/O (GUI programs, high performance network servers etc.),
39     but can also be used to easily do operations in parallel that are
40     normally done sequentially, e.g. stat'ing many files, which is much
41     faster on a RAID volume or over NFS when you do a number of stat
42     operations concurrently.
43    
44 root 1.20 While most of this works on all types of file descriptors (for example
45     sockets), using these functions on file descriptors that support
46 root 1.24 nonblocking operation (again, sockets, pipes etc.) is very inefficient.
47 root 1.38 Use an event loop for that (such as the EV module): IO::AIO will
48 root 1.24 naturally fit into such an event loop itself.
49 root 1.19
50 root 1.18 In this version, a number of threads are started that execute your
51     requests and signal their completion. You don't need thread support in
52     perl, and the threads created by this module will not be visible to
53     perl. In the future, this module might make use of the native aio
54     functions available on many operating systems. However, they are often
55 root 1.19 not well-supported or restricted (GNU/Linux doesn't allow them on normal
56 root 1.18 files currently, for example), and they would only support aio_read and
57 root 1.2 aio_write, so the remaining functionality would have to be implemented
58     using threads anyway.
59 root 1.1
60 root 1.24 Although the module will work in the presence of other (Perl-) threads,
61     it is currently not reentrant in any way, so use appropriate locking
62     yourself, always call "poll_cb" from within the same thread, or never
63     call "poll_cb" (or other "aio_" functions) recursively.
64 root 1.18
65 root 1.19 EXAMPLE
66 root 1.38 This is a simple example that uses the EV module and loads /etc/passwd
67     asynchronously:
68 root 1.19
69     use Fcntl;
70 root 1.38 use EV;
71 root 1.19 use IO::AIO;
72    
73 root 1.38 # register the IO::AIO callback with EV
74     my $aio_w = EV::io IO::AIO::poll_fileno, EV::READ, \&IO::AIO::poll_cb;
75 root 1.19
76     # queue the request to open /etc/passwd
77 root 1.44 aio_open "/etc/passwd", IO::AIO::O_RDONLY, 0, sub {
78 root 1.21 my $fh = shift
79 root 1.19 or die "error while opening: $!";
80    
81     # stat'ing filehandles is generally non-blocking
82     my $size = -s $fh;
83    
84     # queue a request to read the file
85     my $contents;
86     aio_read $fh, 0, $size, $contents, 0, sub {
87     $_[0] == $size
88     or die "short read: $!";
89    
90     close $fh;
91    
92     # file contents now in $contents
93     print $contents;
94    
95     # exit event loop and program
96 root 1.38 EV::unloop;
97 root 1.19 };
98     };
99    
100     # possibly queue up other requests, or open GUI windows,
101     # check for sockets etc. etc.
102    
103     # process events as long as there are some:
104 root 1.38 EV::loop;
105 root 1.19
106 root 1.18 REQUEST ANATOMY AND LIFETIME
107     Every "aio_*" function creates a request. which is a C data structure
108     not directly visible to Perl.
109    
110     If called in non-void context, every request function returns a Perl
111     object representing the request. In void context, nothing is returned,
112     which saves a bit of memory.
113    
114     The perl object is a fairly standard ref-to-hash object. The hash
115     contents are not used by IO::AIO so you are free to store anything you
116     like in it.
117    
118     During their existance, aio requests travel through the following
119     states, in order:
120    
121     ready
122     Immediately after a request is created it is put into the ready
123     state, waiting for a thread to execute it.
124    
125     execute
126     A thread has accepted the request for processing and is currently
127     executing it (e.g. blocking in read).
128    
129     pending
130     The request has been executed and is waiting for result processing.
131    
132     While request submission and execution is fully asynchronous, result
133     processing is not and relies on the perl interpreter calling
134     "poll_cb" (or another function with the same effect).
135    
136     result
137     The request results are processed synchronously by "poll_cb".
138    
139     The "poll_cb" function will process all outstanding aio requests by
140     calling their callbacks, freeing memory associated with them and
141     managing any groups they are contained in.
142    
143     done
144     Request has reached the end of its lifetime and holds no resources
145     anymore (except possibly for the Perl object, but its connection to
146     the actual aio request is severed and calling its methods will
147     either do nothing or result in a runtime error).
148 root 1.1
149 root 1.4 FUNCTIONS
150 root 1.43 QUICK OVERVIEW
151     This section simply lists the prototypes of the most important functions
152     for quick reference. See the following sections for function-by-function
153     documentation.
154    
155     aio_open $pathname, $flags, $mode, $callback->($fh)
156     aio_close $fh, $callback->($status)
157     aio_read $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset, $callback->($retval)
158     aio_write $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset, $callback->($retval)
159     aio_sendfile $out_fh, $in_fh, $in_offset, $length, $callback->($retval)
160     aio_readahead $fh,$offset,$length, $callback->($retval)
161     aio_stat $fh_or_path, $callback->($status)
162     aio_lstat $fh, $callback->($status)
163     aio_statvfs $fh_or_path, $callback->($statvfs)
164     aio_utime $fh_or_path, $atime, $mtime, $callback->($status)
165     aio_chown $fh_or_path, $uid, $gid, $callback->($status)
166     aio_truncate $fh_or_path, $offset, $callback->($status)
167     aio_chmod $fh_or_path, $mode, $callback->($status)
168     aio_unlink $pathname, $callback->($status)
169     aio_mknod $path, $mode, $dev, $callback->($status)
170     aio_link $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
171     aio_symlink $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
172     aio_readlink $path, $callback->($link)
173     aio_rename $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
174     aio_mkdir $pathname, $mode, $callback->($status)
175     aio_rmdir $pathname, $callback->($status)
176     aio_readdir $pathname, $callback->($entries)
177     aio_readdirx $pathname, $flags, $callback->($entries, $flags)
178     IO::AIO::READDIR_DENTS IO::AIO::READDIR_DIRS_FIRST
179     IO::AIO::READDIR_STAT_ORDER IO::AIO::READDIR_FOUND_UNKNOWN
180     aio_load $path, $data, $callback->($status)
181     aio_copy $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
182     aio_move $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
183     aio_scandir $path, $maxreq, $callback->($dirs, $nondirs)
184     aio_rmtree $path, $callback->($status)
185     aio_sync $callback->($status)
186     aio_fsync $fh, $callback->($status)
187     aio_fdatasync $fh, $callback->($status)
188     aio_sync_file_range $fh, $offset, $nbytes, $flags, $callback->($status)
189     aio_pathsync $path, $callback->($status)
190     aio_msync $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef, flags = 0, $callback->($status)
191     aio_mtouch $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef, flags = 0, $callback->($status)
192 root 1.44 aio_mlock $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef, $callback->($status)
193     aio_mlockall $flags, $callback->($status)
194 root 1.43 aio_group $callback->(...)
195     aio_nop $callback->()
196    
197     $prev_pri = aioreq_pri [$pri]
198     aioreq_nice $pri_adjust
199    
200     IO::AIO::poll_wait
201     IO::AIO::poll_cb
202     IO::AIO::poll
203     IO::AIO::flush
204     IO::AIO::max_poll_reqs $nreqs
205     IO::AIO::max_poll_time $seconds
206     IO::AIO::min_parallel $nthreads
207     IO::AIO::max_parallel $nthreads
208     IO::AIO::max_idle $nthreads
209 root 1.46 IO::AIO::idle_timeout $seconds
210 root 1.43 IO::AIO::max_outstanding $maxreqs
211     IO::AIO::nreqs
212     IO::AIO::nready
213     IO::AIO::npending
214    
215     IO::AIO::sendfile $ofh, $ifh, $offset, $count
216     IO::AIO::fadvise $fh, $offset, $len, $advice
217 root 1.44 IO::AIO::madvise $scalar, $offset, $length, $advice
218     IO::AIO::mprotect $scalar, $offset, $length, $protect
219     IO::AIO::munlock $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef
220 root 1.43 IO::AIO::munlockall
221    
222 root 1.19 AIO REQUEST FUNCTIONS
223 root 1.20 All the "aio_*" calls are more or less thin wrappers around the syscall
224     with the same name (sans "aio_"). The arguments are similar or
225     identical, and they all accept an additional (and optional) $callback
226     argument which must be a code reference. This code reference will get
227     called with the syscall return code (e.g. most syscalls return -1 on
228 root 1.32 error, unlike perl, which usually delivers "false") as its sole argument
229     after the given syscall has been executed asynchronously.
230 root 1.20
231     All functions expecting a filehandle keep a copy of the filehandle
232     internally until the request has finished.
233    
234     All functions return request objects of type IO::AIO::REQ that allow
235     further manipulation of those requests while they are in-flight.
236    
237     The pathnames you pass to these routines *must* be absolute and encoded
238     as octets. The reason for the former is that at the time the request is
239     being executed, the current working directory could have changed.
240     Alternatively, you can make sure that you never change the current
241     working directory anywhere in the program and then use relative paths.
242    
243     To encode pathnames as octets, either make sure you either: a) always
244     pass in filenames you got from outside (command line, readdir etc.)
245     without tinkering, b) are ASCII or ISO 8859-1, c) use the Encode module
246     and encode your pathnames to the locale (or other) encoding in effect in
247     the user environment, d) use Glib::filename_from_unicode on unicode
248     filenames or e) use something else to ensure your scalar has the correct
249     contents.
250    
251     This works, btw. independent of the internal UTF-8 bit, which IO::AIO
252 root 1.32 handles correctly whether it is set or not.
253 root 1.20
254     $prev_pri = aioreq_pri [$pri]
255     Returns the priority value that would be used for the next request
256     and, if $pri is given, sets the priority for the next aio request.
257    
258     The default priority is 0, the minimum and maximum priorities are -4
259     and 4, respectively. Requests with higher priority will be serviced
260     first.
261    
262     The priority will be reset to 0 after each call to one of the
263     "aio_*" functions.
264    
265     Example: open a file with low priority, then read something from it
266     with higher priority so the read request is serviced before other
267     low priority open requests (potentially spamming the cache):
268    
269     aioreq_pri -3;
270     aio_open ..., sub {
271     return unless $_[0];
272    
273     aioreq_pri -2;
274     aio_read $_[0], ..., sub {
275     ...
276     };
277     };
278    
279     aioreq_nice $pri_adjust
280     Similar to "aioreq_pri", but subtracts the given value from the
281     current priority, so the effect is cumulative.
282    
283     aio_open $pathname, $flags, $mode, $callback->($fh)
284     Asynchronously open or create a file and call the callback with a
285     newly created filehandle for the file.
286    
287     The pathname passed to "aio_open" must be absolute. See API NOTES,
288     above, for an explanation.
289    
290     The $flags argument is a bitmask. See the "Fcntl" module for a list.
291     They are the same as used by "sysopen".
292    
293     Likewise, $mode specifies the mode of the newly created file, if it
294     didn't exist and "O_CREAT" has been given, just like perl's
295     "sysopen", except that it is mandatory (i.e. use 0 if you don't
296 root 1.23 create new files, and 0666 or 0777 if you do). Note that the $mode
297     will be modified by the umask in effect then the request is being
298     executed, so better never change the umask.
299 root 1.20
300     Example:
301    
302 root 1.44 aio_open "/etc/passwd", IO::AIO::O_RDONLY, 0, sub {
303 root 1.20 if ($_[0]) {
304     print "open successful, fh is $_[0]\n";
305     ...
306     } else {
307     die "open failed: $!\n";
308     }
309     };
310    
311 root 1.47 In addition to all the common open modes/flags ("O_RDONLY",
312     "O_WRONLY", "O_RDWR", "O_CREAT", "O_TRUNC", "O_EXCL" and
313     "O_APPEND"), the following POSIX and non-POSIX constants are
314     available (missing ones on your system are, as usual, 0):
315    
316     "O_ASYNC", "O_DIRECT", "O_NOATIME", "O_CLOEXEC", "O_NOCTTY",
317     "O_NOFOLLOW", "O_NONBLOCK", "O_EXEC", "O_SEARCH", "O_DIRECTORY",
318     "O_DSYNC", "O_RSYNC", "O_SYNC" and "O_TTY_INIT".
319    
320 root 1.20 aio_close $fh, $callback->($status)
321     Asynchronously close a file and call the callback with the result
322 root 1.26 code.
323 root 1.20
324 root 1.27 Unfortunately, you can't do this to perl. Perl *insists* very
325     strongly on closing the file descriptor associated with the
326 root 1.29 filehandle itself.
327 root 1.27
328 root 1.29 Therefore, "aio_close" will not close the filehandle - instead it
329     will use dup2 to overwrite the file descriptor with the write-end of
330     a pipe (the pipe fd will be created on demand and will be cached).
331 root 1.27
332 root 1.29 Or in other words: the file descriptor will be closed, but it will
333     not be free for reuse until the perl filehandle is closed.
334 root 1.20
335     aio_read $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset, $callback->($retval)
336     aio_write $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset, $callback->($retval)
337 root 1.35 Reads or writes $length bytes from or to the specified $fh and
338     $offset into the scalar given by $data and offset $dataoffset and
339     calls the callback without the actual number of bytes read (or -1 on
340     error, just like the syscall).
341    
342     "aio_read" will, like "sysread", shrink or grow the $data scalar to
343     offset plus the actual number of bytes read.
344 root 1.24
345 root 1.25 If $offset is undefined, then the current file descriptor offset
346     will be used (and updated), otherwise the file descriptor offset
347     will not be changed by these calls.
348 root 1.24
349     If $length is undefined in "aio_write", use the remaining length of
350     $data.
351    
352     If $dataoffset is less than zero, it will be counted from the end of
353     $data.
354 root 1.20
355     The $data scalar *MUST NOT* be modified in any way while the request
356 root 1.24 is outstanding. Modifying it can result in segfaults or World War
357     III (if the necessary/optional hardware is installed).
358 root 1.20
359     Example: Read 15 bytes at offset 7 into scalar $buffer, starting at
360     offset 0 within the scalar:
361    
362     aio_read $fh, 7, 15, $buffer, 0, sub {
363     $_[0] > 0 or die "read error: $!";
364     print "read $_[0] bytes: <$buffer>\n";
365     };
366    
367     aio_sendfile $out_fh, $in_fh, $in_offset, $length, $callback->($retval)
368     Tries to copy $length bytes from $in_fh to $out_fh. It starts
369     reading at byte offset $in_offset, and starts writing at the current
370     file offset of $out_fh. Because of that, it is not safe to issue
371     more than one "aio_sendfile" per $out_fh, as they will interfere
372     with each other.
373    
374 root 1.45 Please note that "aio_sendfile" can read more bytes from $in_fh than
375     are written, and there is no way to find out how many bytes have
376     been read from "aio_sendfile" alone, as "aio_sendfile" only provides
377     the number of bytes written to $out_fh. Only if the result value
378     equals $length one can assume that $length bytes have been read.
379    
380     Unlike with other "aio_" functions, it makes a lot of sense to use
381     "aio_sendfile" on non-blocking sockets, as long as one end
382     (typically the $in_fh) is a file - the file I/O will then be
383     asynchronous, while the socket I/O will be non-blocking. Note,
384     however, that you can run into a trap where "aio_sendfile" reads
385     some data with readahead, then fails to write all data, and when the
386     socket is ready the next time, the data in the cache is already
387     lost, forcing "aio_sendfile" to again hit the disk. Explicit
388     "aio_read" + "aio_write" let's you control resource usage much
389     better.
390    
391 root 1.20 This call tries to make use of a native "sendfile" syscall to
392     provide zero-copy operation. For this to work, $out_fh should refer
393 root 1.43 to a socket, and $in_fh should refer to an mmap'able file.
394 root 1.20
395 root 1.41 If a native sendfile cannot be found or it fails with "ENOSYS",
396     "ENOTSUP", "EOPNOTSUPP", "EAFNOSUPPORT", "EPROTOTYPE" or "ENOTSOCK",
397     it will be emulated, so you can call "aio_sendfile" on any type of
398     filehandle regardless of the limitations of the operating system.
399 root 1.20
400     aio_readahead $fh,$offset,$length, $callback->($retval)
401     "aio_readahead" populates the page cache with data from a file so
402     that subsequent reads from that file will not block on disk I/O. The
403     $offset argument specifies the starting point from which data is to
404     be read and $length specifies the number of bytes to be read. I/O is
405     performed in whole pages, so that offset is effectively rounded down
406     to a page boundary and bytes are read up to the next page boundary
407     greater than or equal to (off-set+length). "aio_readahead" does not
408     read beyond the end of the file. The current file offset of the file
409     is left unchanged.
410    
411     If that syscall doesn't exist (likely if your OS isn't Linux) it
412     will be emulated by simply reading the data, which would have a
413     similar effect.
414    
415     aio_stat $fh_or_path, $callback->($status)
416     aio_lstat $fh, $callback->($status)
417     Works like perl's "stat" or "lstat" in void context. The callback
418     will be called after the stat and the results will be available
419     using "stat _" or "-s _" etc...
420    
421     The pathname passed to "aio_stat" must be absolute. See API NOTES,
422     above, for an explanation.
423    
424     Currently, the stats are always 64-bit-stats, i.e. instead of
425     returning an error when stat'ing a large file, the results will be
426     silently truncated unless perl itself is compiled with large file
427     support.
428    
429 root 1.46 To help interpret the mode and dev/rdev stat values, IO::AIO offers
430     the following constants and functions (if not implemented, the
431     constants will be 0 and the functions will either "croak" or fall
432     back on traditional behaviour).
433    
434     "S_IFMT", "S_IFIFO", "S_IFCHR", "S_IFBLK", "S_IFLNK", "S_IFREG",
435     "S_IFDIR", "S_IFWHT", "S_IFSOCK", "IO::AIO::major $dev_t",
436     "IO::AIO::minor $dev_t", "IO::AIO::makedev $major, $minor".
437    
438 root 1.20 Example: Print the length of /etc/passwd:
439    
440     aio_stat "/etc/passwd", sub {
441     $_[0] and die "stat failed: $!";
442     print "size is ", -s _, "\n";
443     };
444    
445 root 1.42 aio_statvfs $fh_or_path, $callback->($statvfs)
446     Works like the POSIX "statvfs" or "fstatvfs" syscalls, depending on
447     whether a file handle or path was passed.
448    
449     On success, the callback is passed a hash reference with the
450     following members: "bsize", "frsize", "blocks", "bfree", "bavail",
451     "files", "ffree", "favail", "fsid", "flag" and "namemax". On
452     failure, "undef" is passed.
453    
454     The following POSIX IO::AIO::ST_* constants are defined: "ST_RDONLY"
455     and "ST_NOSUID".
456    
457     The following non-POSIX IO::AIO::ST_* flag masks are defined to
458     their correct value when available, or to 0 on systems that do not
459     support them: "ST_NODEV", "ST_NOEXEC", "ST_SYNCHRONOUS",
460     "ST_MANDLOCK", "ST_WRITE", "ST_APPEND", "ST_IMMUTABLE",
461     "ST_NOATIME", "ST_NODIRATIME" and "ST_RELATIME".
462    
463     Example: stat "/wd" and dump out the data if successful.
464    
465     aio_statvfs "/wd", sub {
466     my $f = $_[0]
467     or die "statvfs: $!";
468    
469     use Data::Dumper;
470     say Dumper $f;
471     };
472    
473     # result:
474     {
475     bsize => 1024,
476     bfree => 4333064312,
477     blocks => 10253828096,
478     files => 2050765568,
479     flag => 4096,
480     favail => 2042092649,
481     bavail => 4333064312,
482     ffree => 2042092649,
483     namemax => 255,
484     frsize => 1024,
485     fsid => 1810
486     }
487    
488 root 1.24 aio_utime $fh_or_path, $atime, $mtime, $callback->($status)
489     Works like perl's "utime" function (including the special case of
490     $atime and $mtime being undef). Fractional times are supported if
491     the underlying syscalls support them.
492    
493     When called with a pathname, uses utimes(2) if available, otherwise
494     utime(2). If called on a file descriptor, uses futimes(2) if
495     available, otherwise returns ENOSYS, so this is not portable.
496    
497     Examples:
498    
499     # set atime and mtime to current time (basically touch(1)):
500     aio_utime "path", undef, undef;
501     # set atime to current time and mtime to beginning of the epoch:
502     aio_utime "path", time, undef; # undef==0
503    
504     aio_chown $fh_or_path, $uid, $gid, $callback->($status)
505     Works like perl's "chown" function, except that "undef" for either
506     $uid or $gid is being interpreted as "do not change" (but -1 can
507     also be used).
508    
509     Examples:
510    
511     # same as "chown root path" in the shell:
512     aio_chown "path", 0, -1;
513     # same as above:
514     aio_chown "path", 0, undef;
515    
516     aio_truncate $fh_or_path, $offset, $callback->($status)
517     Works like truncate(2) or ftruncate(2).
518    
519     aio_chmod $fh_or_path, $mode, $callback->($status)
520     Works like perl's "chmod" function.
521    
522 root 1.20 aio_unlink $pathname, $callback->($status)
523     Asynchronously unlink (delete) a file and call the callback with the
524     result code.
525    
526     aio_mknod $path, $mode, $dev, $callback->($status)
527     [EXPERIMENTAL]
528    
529     Asynchronously create a device node (or fifo). See mknod(2).
530    
531     The only (POSIX-) portable way of calling this function is:
532    
533     aio_mknod $path, IO::AIO::S_IFIFO | $mode, 0, sub { ...
534    
535 root 1.46 See "aio_stat" for info about some potentially helpful extra
536     constants and functions.
537    
538 root 1.20 aio_link $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
539     Asynchronously create a new link to the existing object at $srcpath
540     at the path $dstpath and call the callback with the result code.
541    
542     aio_symlink $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
543     Asynchronously create a new symbolic link to the existing object at
544     $srcpath at the path $dstpath and call the callback with the result
545     code.
546    
547     aio_readlink $path, $callback->($link)
548     Asynchronously read the symlink specified by $path and pass it to
549     the callback. If an error occurs, nothing or undef gets passed to
550     the callback.
551    
552     aio_rename $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
553     Asynchronously rename the object at $srcpath to $dstpath, just as
554     rename(2) and call the callback with the result code.
555    
556 root 1.23 aio_mkdir $pathname, $mode, $callback->($status)
557     Asynchronously mkdir (create) a directory and call the callback with
558     the result code. $mode will be modified by the umask at the time the
559     request is executed, so do not change your umask.
560    
561 root 1.20 aio_rmdir $pathname, $callback->($status)
562     Asynchronously rmdir (delete) a directory and call the callback with
563     the result code.
564    
565     aio_readdir $pathname, $callback->($entries)
566     Unlike the POSIX call of the same name, "aio_readdir" reads an
567     entire directory (i.e. opendir + readdir + closedir). The entries
568     will not be sorted, and will NOT include the "." and ".." entries.
569    
570 root 1.36 The callback is passed a single argument which is either "undef" or
571     an array-ref with the filenames.
572    
573     aio_readdirx $pathname, $flags, $callback->($entries, $flags)
574     Quite similar to "aio_readdir", but the $flags argument allows to
575     tune behaviour and output format. In case of an error, $entries will
576     be "undef".
577    
578     The flags are a combination of the following constants, ORed
579     together (the flags will also be passed to the callback, possibly
580     modified):
581    
582     IO::AIO::READDIR_DENTS
583 root 1.47 When this flag is off, then the callback gets an arrayref
584     consisting of names only (as with "aio_readdir"), otherwise it
585     gets an arrayref with "[$name, $type, $inode]" arrayrefs, each
586 root 1.36 describing a single directory entry in more detail.
587    
588     $name is the name of the entry.
589    
590     $type is one of the "IO::AIO::DT_xxx" constants:
591    
592     "IO::AIO::DT_UNKNOWN", "IO::AIO::DT_FIFO", "IO::AIO::DT_CHR",
593     "IO::AIO::DT_DIR", "IO::AIO::DT_BLK", "IO::AIO::DT_REG",
594     "IO::AIO::DT_LNK", "IO::AIO::DT_SOCK", "IO::AIO::DT_WHT".
595    
596     "IO::AIO::DT_UNKNOWN" means just that: readdir does not know. If
597     you need to know, you have to run stat yourself. Also, for speed
598     reasons, the $type scalars are read-only: you can not modify
599     them.
600    
601     $inode is the inode number (which might not be exact on systems
602 root 1.38 with 64 bit inode numbers and 32 bit perls). This field has
603     unspecified content on systems that do not deliver the inode
604     information.
605 root 1.36
606     IO::AIO::READDIR_DIRS_FIRST
607     When this flag is set, then the names will be returned in an
608 root 1.47 order where likely directories come first, in optimal stat
609     order. This is useful when you need to quickly find directories,
610     or you want to find all directories while avoiding to stat()
611     each entry.
612 root 1.36
613     If the system returns type information in readdir, then this is
614     used to find directories directly. Otherwise, likely directories
615 root 1.47 are names beginning with ".", or otherwise names with no dots,
616     of which names with short names are tried first.
617 root 1.36
618     IO::AIO::READDIR_STAT_ORDER
619     When this flag is set, then the names will be returned in an
620     order suitable for stat()'ing each one. That is, when you plan
621     to stat() all files in the given directory, then the returned
622     order will likely be fastest.
623    
624     If both this flag and "IO::AIO::READDIR_DIRS_FIRST" are
625     specified, then the likely dirs come first, resulting in a less
626     optimal stat order.
627    
628     IO::AIO::READDIR_FOUND_UNKNOWN
629     This flag should not be set when calling "aio_readdirx".
630     Instead, it is being set by "aio_readdirx", when any of the
631     $type's found were "IO::AIO::DT_UNKNOWN". The absense of this
632     flag therefore indicates that all $type's are known, which can
633     be used to speed up some algorithms.
634 root 1.20
635 root 1.22 aio_load $path, $data, $callback->($status)
636     This is a composite request that tries to fully load the given file
637     into memory. Status is the same as with aio_read.
638    
639 root 1.20 aio_copy $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
640     Try to copy the *file* (directories not supported as either source
641     or destination) from $srcpath to $dstpath and call the callback with
642 root 1.40 a status of 0 (ok) or -1 (error, see $!).
643 root 1.20
644 root 1.32 This is a composite request that creates the destination file with
645     mode 0200 and copies the contents of the source file into it using
646     "aio_sendfile", followed by restoring atime, mtime, access mode and
647     uid/gid, in that order.
648 root 1.20
649     If an error occurs, the partial destination file will be unlinked,
650     if possible, except when setting atime, mtime, access mode and
651     uid/gid, where errors are being ignored.
652    
653     aio_move $srcpath, $dstpath, $callback->($status)
654     Try to move the *file* (directories not supported as either source
655     or destination) from $srcpath to $dstpath and call the callback with
656 root 1.40 a status of 0 (ok) or -1 (error, see $!).
657 root 1.20
658 root 1.33 This is a composite request that tries to rename(2) the file first;
659     if rename fails with "EXDEV", it copies the file with "aio_copy"
660     and, if that is successful, unlinks the $srcpath.
661 root 1.20
662     aio_scandir $path, $maxreq, $callback->($dirs, $nondirs)
663     Scans a directory (similar to "aio_readdir") but additionally tries
664     to efficiently separate the entries of directory $path into two sets
665     of names, directories you can recurse into (directories), and ones
666     you cannot recurse into (everything else, including symlinks to
667     directories).
668    
669     "aio_scandir" is a composite request that creates of many sub
670     requests_ $maxreq specifies the maximum number of outstanding aio
671     requests that this function generates. If it is "<= 0", then a
672     suitable default will be chosen (currently 4).
673    
674     On error, the callback is called without arguments, otherwise it
675     receives two array-refs with path-relative entry names.
676    
677     Example:
678    
679     aio_scandir $dir, 0, sub {
680     my ($dirs, $nondirs) = @_;
681     print "real directories: @$dirs\n";
682     print "everything else: @$nondirs\n";
683     };
684    
685     Implementation notes.
686    
687     The "aio_readdir" cannot be avoided, but "stat()"'ing every entry
688     can.
689    
690 root 1.36 If readdir returns file type information, then this is used directly
691     to find directories.
692    
693     Otherwise, after reading the directory, the modification time, size
694     etc. of the directory before and after the readdir is checked, and
695     if they match (and isn't the current time), the link count will be
696     used to decide how many entries are directories (if >= 2).
697     Otherwise, no knowledge of the number of subdirectories will be
698     assumed.
699    
700     Then entries will be sorted into likely directories a non-initial
701     dot currently) and likely non-directories (see "aio_readdirx"). Then
702     every entry plus an appended "/." will be "stat"'ed, likely
703     directories first, in order of their inode numbers. If that
704     succeeds, it assumes that the entry is a directory or a symlink to
705     directory (which will be checked seperately). This is often faster
706     than stat'ing the entry itself because filesystems might detect the
707     type of the entry without reading the inode data (e.g. ext2fs
708     filetype feature), even on systems that cannot return the filetype
709     information on readdir.
710 root 1.20
711     If the known number of directories (link count - 2) has been
712     reached, the rest of the entries is assumed to be non-directories.
713    
714     This only works with certainty on POSIX (= UNIX) filesystems, which
715     fortunately are the vast majority of filesystems around.
716    
717     It will also likely work on non-POSIX filesystems with reduced
718     efficiency as those tend to return 0 or 1 as link counts, which
719     disables the directory counting heuristic.
720    
721 root 1.23 aio_rmtree $path, $callback->($status)
722     Delete a directory tree starting (and including) $path, return the
723     status of the final "rmdir" only. This is a composite request that
724     uses "aio_scandir" to recurse into and rmdir directories, and unlink
725     everything else.
726    
727 root 1.28 aio_sync $callback->($status)
728     Asynchronously call sync and call the callback when finished.
729    
730 root 1.20 aio_fsync $fh, $callback->($status)
731     Asynchronously call fsync on the given filehandle and call the
732     callback with the fsync result code.
733    
734     aio_fdatasync $fh, $callback->($status)
735     Asynchronously call fdatasync on the given filehandle and call the
736     callback with the fdatasync result code.
737    
738     If this call isn't available because your OS lacks it or it couldn't
739     be detected, it will be emulated by calling "fsync" instead.
740    
741 root 1.34 aio_sync_file_range $fh, $offset, $nbytes, $flags, $callback->($status)
742     Sync the data portion of the file specified by $offset and $length
743     to disk (but NOT the metadata), by calling the Linux-specific
744     sync_file_range call. If sync_file_range is not available or it
745     returns ENOSYS, then fdatasync or fsync is being substituted.
746    
747     $flags can be a combination of
748     "IO::AIO::SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_BEFORE",
749     "IO::AIO::SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WRITE" and
750     "IO::AIO::SYNC_FILE_RANGE_WAIT_AFTER": refer to the sync_file_range
751     manpage for details.
752    
753 root 1.28 aio_pathsync $path, $callback->($status)
754     This request tries to open, fsync and close the given path. This is
755 root 1.32 a composite request intended to sync directories after directory
756 root 1.28 operations (E.g. rename). This might not work on all operating
757     systems or have any specific effect, but usually it makes sure that
758     directory changes get written to disc. It works for anything that
759     can be opened for read-only, not just directories.
760    
761 root 1.39 Future versions of this function might fall back to other methods
762     when "fsync" on the directory fails (such as calling "sync").
763    
764 root 1.28 Passes 0 when everything went ok, and -1 on error.
765    
766 root 1.41 aio_msync $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef, flags = 0,
767     $callback->($status)
768     This is a rather advanced IO::AIO call, which only works on
769 root 1.43 mmap(2)ed scalars (see the "IO::AIO::mmap" function, although it
770     also works on data scalars managed by the Sys::Mmap or Mmap modules,
771     note that the scalar must only be modified in-place while an aio
772     operation is pending on it).
773 root 1.41
774     It calls the "msync" function of your OS, if available, with the
775     memory area starting at $offset in the string and ending $length
776     bytes later. If $length is negative, counts from the end, and if
777     $length is "undef", then it goes till the end of the string. The
778     flags can be a combination of "IO::AIO::MS_ASYNC",
779     "IO::AIO::MS_INVALIDATE" and "IO::AIO::MS_SYNC".
780    
781     aio_mtouch $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef, flags = 0,
782     $callback->($status)
783     This is a rather advanced IO::AIO call, which works best on
784     mmap(2)ed scalars.
785    
786     It touches (reads or writes) all memory pages in the specified range
787     inside the scalar. All caveats and parameters are the same as for
788     "aio_msync", above, except for flags, which must be either 0 (which
789     reads all pages and ensures they are instantiated) or
790     "IO::AIO::MT_MODIFY", which modifies the memory page s(by reading
791     and writing an octet from it, which dirties the page).
792    
793 root 1.44 aio_mlock $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef, $callback->($status)
794     This is a rather advanced IO::AIO call, which works best on
795     mmap(2)ed scalars.
796    
797     It reads in all the pages of the underlying storage into memory (if
798     any) and locks them, so they are not getting swapped/paged out or
799     removed.
800    
801     If $length is undefined, then the scalar will be locked till the
802     end.
803    
804     On systems that do not implement "mlock", this function returns -1
805     and sets errno to "ENOSYS".
806    
807     Note that the corresponding "munlock" is synchronous and is
808     documented under "MISCELLANEOUS FUNCTIONS".
809    
810     Example: open a file, mmap and mlock it - both will be undone when
811     $data gets destroyed.
812    
813     open my $fh, "<", $path or die "$path: $!";
814     my $data;
815     IO::AIO::mmap $data, -s $fh, IO::AIO::PROT_READ, IO::AIO::MAP_SHARED, $fh;
816     aio_mlock $data; # mlock in background
817    
818     aio_mlockall $flags, $callback->($status)
819     Calls the "mlockall" function with the given $flags (a combination
820     of "IO::AIO::MCL_CURRENT" and "IO::AIO::MCL_FUTURE").
821    
822     On systems that do not implement "mlockall", this function returns
823     -1 and sets errno to "ENOSYS".
824    
825     Note that the corresponding "munlockall" is synchronous and is
826     documented under "MISCELLANEOUS FUNCTIONS".
827    
828     Example: asynchronously lock all current and future pages into
829     memory.
830    
831     aio_mlockall IO::AIO::MCL_FUTURE;
832    
833 root 1.20 aio_group $callback->(...)
834     This is a very special aio request: Instead of doing something, it
835     is a container for other aio requests, which is useful if you want
836     to bundle many requests into a single, composite, request with a
837     definite callback and the ability to cancel the whole request with
838     its subrequests.
839    
840     Returns an object of class IO::AIO::GRP. See its documentation below
841     for more info.
842    
843     Example:
844    
845     my $grp = aio_group sub {
846     print "all stats done\n";
847     };
848    
849     add $grp
850     (aio_stat ...),
851     (aio_stat ...),
852     ...;
853    
854     aio_nop $callback->()
855     This is a special request - it does nothing in itself and is only
856     used for side effects, such as when you want to add a dummy request
857     to a group so that finishing the requests in the group depends on
858     executing the given code.
859    
860     While this request does nothing, it still goes through the execution
861     phase and still requires a worker thread. Thus, the callback will
862     not be executed immediately but only after other requests in the
863     queue have entered their execution phase. This can be used to
864     measure request latency.
865    
866     IO::AIO::aio_busy $fractional_seconds, $callback->() *NOT EXPORTED*
867     Mainly used for debugging and benchmarking, this aio request puts
868     one of the request workers to sleep for the given time.
869    
870     While it is theoretically handy to have simple I/O scheduling
871     requests like sleep and file handle readable/writable, the overhead
872     this creates is immense (it blocks a thread for a long time) so do
873     not use this function except to put your application under
874     artificial I/O pressure.
875 root 1.18
876     IO::AIO::REQ CLASS
877 root 1.20 All non-aggregate "aio_*" functions return an object of this class when
878     called in non-void context.
879 root 1.18
880 root 1.20 cancel $req
881     Cancels the request, if possible. Has the effect of skipping
882     execution when entering the execute state and skipping calling the
883     callback when entering the the result state, but will leave the
884 root 1.37 request otherwise untouched (with the exception of readdir). That
885     means that requests that currently execute will not be stopped and
886     resources held by the request will not be freed prematurely.
887 root 1.18
888 root 1.20 cb $req $callback->(...)
889     Replace (or simply set) the callback registered to the request.
890 root 1.18
891     IO::AIO::GRP CLASS
892 root 1.20 This class is a subclass of IO::AIO::REQ, so all its methods apply to
893     objects of this class, too.
894 root 1.18
895 root 1.20 A IO::AIO::GRP object is a special request that can contain multiple
896     other aio requests.
897 root 1.18
898 root 1.20 You create one by calling the "aio_group" constructing function with a
899     callback that will be called when all contained requests have entered
900     the "done" state:
901 root 1.18
902 root 1.20 my $grp = aio_group sub {
903     print "all requests are done\n";
904     };
905    
906     You add requests by calling the "add" method with one or more
907     "IO::AIO::REQ" objects:
908    
909     $grp->add (aio_unlink "...");
910    
911     add $grp aio_stat "...", sub {
912     $_[0] or return $grp->result ("error");
913 root 1.1
914 root 1.20 # add another request dynamically, if first succeeded
915     add $grp aio_open "...", sub {
916     $grp->result ("ok");
917     };
918     };
919 root 1.18
920 root 1.20 This makes it very easy to create composite requests (see the source of
921     "aio_move" for an application) that work and feel like simple requests.
922 root 1.18
923 root 1.28 * The IO::AIO::GRP objects will be cleaned up during calls to
924     "IO::AIO::poll_cb", just like any other request.
925    
926     * They can be canceled like any other request. Canceling will cancel
927     not only the request itself, but also all requests it contains.
928    
929     * They can also can also be added to other IO::AIO::GRP objects.
930    
931     * You must not add requests to a group from within the group callback
932     (or any later time).
933 root 1.20
934     Their lifetime, simplified, looks like this: when they are empty, they
935     will finish very quickly. If they contain only requests that are in the
936     "done" state, they will also finish. Otherwise they will continue to
937     exist.
938    
939 root 1.32 That means after creating a group you have some time to add requests
940     (precisely before the callback has been invoked, which is only done
941     within the "poll_cb"). And in the callbacks of those requests, you can
942     add further requests to the group. And only when all those requests have
943     finished will the the group itself finish.
944 root 1.20
945     add $grp ...
946     $grp->add (...)
947     Add one or more requests to the group. Any type of IO::AIO::REQ can
948     be added, including other groups, as long as you do not create
949     circular dependencies.
950    
951     Returns all its arguments.
952    
953     $grp->cancel_subs
954     Cancel all subrequests and clears any feeder, but not the group
955     request itself. Useful when you queued a lot of events but got a
956     result early.
957    
958 root 1.41 The group request will finish normally (you cannot add requests to
959     the group).
960    
961 root 1.20 $grp->result (...)
962     Set the result value(s) that will be passed to the group callback
963 root 1.28 when all subrequests have finished and set the groups errno to the
964 root 1.20 current value of errno (just like calling "errno" without an error
965     number). By default, no argument will be passed and errno is zero.
966    
967     $grp->errno ([$errno])
968     Sets the group errno value to $errno, or the current value of errno
969     when the argument is missing.
970    
971     Every aio request has an associated errno value that is restored
972     when the callback is invoked. This method lets you change this value
973     from its default (0).
974    
975     Calling "result" will also set errno, so make sure you either set $!
976     before the call to "result", or call c<errno> after it.
977    
978     feed $grp $callback->($grp)
979     Sets a feeder/generator on this group: every group can have an
980     attached generator that generates requests if idle. The idea behind
981     this is that, although you could just queue as many requests as you
982     want in a group, this might starve other requests for a potentially
983     long time. For example, "aio_scandir" might generate hundreds of
984     thousands "aio_stat" requests, delaying any later requests for a
985     long time.
986    
987     To avoid this, and allow incremental generation of requests, you can
988     instead a group and set a feeder on it that generates those
989     requests. The feed callback will be called whenever there are few
990     enough (see "limit", below) requests active in the group itself and
991     is expected to queue more requests.
992    
993     The feed callback can queue as many requests as it likes (i.e. "add"
994     does not impose any limits).
995    
996     If the feed does not queue more requests when called, it will be
997     automatically removed from the group.
998    
999 root 1.33 If the feed limit is 0 when this method is called, it will be set to
1000     2 automatically.
1001 root 1.20
1002     Example:
1003    
1004     # stat all files in @files, but only ever use four aio requests concurrently:
1005    
1006     my $grp = aio_group sub { print "finished\n" };
1007     limit $grp 4;
1008     feed $grp sub {
1009     my $file = pop @files
1010     or return;
1011 root 1.18
1012 root 1.20 add $grp aio_stat $file, sub { ... };
1013 root 1.1 };
1014    
1015 root 1.20 limit $grp $num
1016     Sets the feeder limit for the group: The feeder will be called
1017     whenever the group contains less than this many requests.
1018 root 1.18
1019 root 1.20 Setting the limit to 0 will pause the feeding process.
1020 root 1.17
1021 root 1.33 The default value for the limit is 0, but note that setting a feeder
1022     automatically bumps it up to 2.
1023    
1024 root 1.18 SUPPORT FUNCTIONS
1025 root 1.19 EVENT PROCESSING AND EVENT LOOP INTEGRATION
1026 root 1.20 $fileno = IO::AIO::poll_fileno
1027     Return the *request result pipe file descriptor*. This filehandle
1028     must be polled for reading by some mechanism outside this module
1029 root 1.38 (e.g. EV, Glib, select and so on, see below or the SYNOPSIS). If the
1030     pipe becomes readable you have to call "poll_cb" to check the
1031     results.
1032 root 1.20
1033     See "poll_cb" for an example.
1034    
1035     IO::AIO::poll_cb
1036     Process some outstanding events on the result pipe. You have to call
1037 root 1.47 this regularly. Returns 0 if all events could be processed (or there
1038     were no events to process), or -1 if it returned earlier for
1039     whatever reason. Returns immediately when no events are outstanding.
1040     The amount of events processed depends on the settings of
1041     "IO::AIO::max_poll_req" and "IO::AIO::max_poll_time".
1042 root 1.20
1043     If not all requests were processed for whatever reason, the
1044 root 1.31 filehandle will still be ready when "poll_cb" returns, so normally
1045     you don't have to do anything special to have it called later.
1046 root 1.20
1047 root 1.47 Apart from calling "IO::AIO::poll_cb" when the event filehandle
1048     becomes ready, it can be beneficial to call this function from loops
1049     which submit a lot of requests, to make sure the results get
1050     processed when they become available and not just when the loop is
1051     finished and the event loop takes over again. This function returns
1052     very fast when there are no outstanding requests.
1053    
1054 root 1.20 Example: Install an Event watcher that automatically calls
1055 root 1.38 IO::AIO::poll_cb with high priority (more examples can be found in
1056     the SYNOPSIS section, at the top of this document):
1057 root 1.20
1058     Event->io (fd => IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
1059     poll => 'r', async => 1,
1060     cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
1061    
1062 root 1.43 IO::AIO::poll_wait
1063     If there are any outstanding requests and none of them in the result
1064     phase, wait till the result filehandle becomes ready for reading
1065     (simply does a "select" on the filehandle. This is useful if you
1066     want to synchronously wait for some requests to finish).
1067    
1068     See "nreqs" for an example.
1069    
1070     IO::AIO::poll
1071     Waits until some requests have been handled.
1072    
1073     Returns the number of requests processed, but is otherwise strictly
1074     equivalent to:
1075    
1076     IO::AIO::poll_wait, IO::AIO::poll_cb
1077    
1078     IO::AIO::flush
1079     Wait till all outstanding AIO requests have been handled.
1080    
1081     Strictly equivalent to:
1082    
1083     IO::AIO::poll_wait, IO::AIO::poll_cb
1084     while IO::AIO::nreqs;
1085    
1086 root 1.20 IO::AIO::max_poll_reqs $nreqs
1087     IO::AIO::max_poll_time $seconds
1088     These set the maximum number of requests (default 0, meaning
1089     infinity) that are being processed by "IO::AIO::poll_cb" in one
1090     call, respectively the maximum amount of time (default 0, meaning
1091     infinity) spent in "IO::AIO::poll_cb" to process requests (more
1092     correctly the mininum amount of time "poll_cb" is allowed to use).
1093    
1094     Setting "max_poll_time" to a non-zero value creates an overhead of
1095     one syscall per request processed, which is not normally a problem
1096     unless your callbacks are really really fast or your OS is really
1097     really slow (I am not mentioning Solaris here). Using
1098     "max_poll_reqs" incurs no overhead.
1099    
1100     Setting these is useful if you want to ensure some level of
1101     interactiveness when perl is not fast enough to process all requests
1102     in time.
1103    
1104     For interactive programs, values such as 0.01 to 0.1 should be fine.
1105 root 1.4
1106 root 1.20 Example: Install an Event watcher that automatically calls
1107     IO::AIO::poll_cb with low priority, to ensure that other parts of
1108     the program get the CPU sometimes even under high AIO load.
1109 root 1.4
1110 root 1.20 # try not to spend much more than 0.1s in poll_cb
1111     IO::AIO::max_poll_time 0.1;
1112 root 1.4
1113 root 1.20 # use a low priority so other tasks have priority
1114     Event->io (fd => IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
1115     poll => 'r', nice => 1,
1116     cb => &IO::AIO::poll_cb);
1117    
1118 root 1.19 CONTROLLING THE NUMBER OF THREADS
1119 root 1.20 IO::AIO::min_parallel $nthreads
1120     Set the minimum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. The current
1121     default is 8, which means eight asynchronous operations can execute
1122     concurrently at any one time (the number of outstanding requests,
1123     however, is unlimited).
1124    
1125     IO::AIO starts threads only on demand, when an AIO request is queued
1126     and no free thread exists. Please note that queueing up a hundred
1127     requests can create demand for a hundred threads, even if it turns
1128     out that everything is in the cache and could have been processed
1129     faster by a single thread.
1130    
1131     It is recommended to keep the number of threads relatively low, as
1132     some Linux kernel versions will scale negatively with the number of
1133     threads (higher parallelity => MUCH higher latency). With current
1134     Linux 2.6 versions, 4-32 threads should be fine.
1135    
1136     Under most circumstances you don't need to call this function, as
1137     the module selects a default that is suitable for low to moderate
1138     load.
1139    
1140     IO::AIO::max_parallel $nthreads
1141     Sets the maximum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. If more than
1142     the specified number of threads are currently running, this function
1143     kills them. This function blocks until the limit is reached.
1144    
1145     While $nthreads are zero, aio requests get queued but not executed
1146     until the number of threads has been increased again.
1147    
1148     This module automatically runs "max_parallel 0" at program end, to
1149     ensure that all threads are killed and that there are no outstanding
1150     requests.
1151    
1152     Under normal circumstances you don't need to call this function.
1153    
1154     IO::AIO::max_idle $nthreads
1155     Limit the number of threads (default: 4) that are allowed to idle
1156 root 1.46 (i.e., threads that did not get a request to process within the idle
1157     timeout (default: 10 seconds). That means if a thread becomes idle
1158     while $nthreads other threads are also idle, it will free its
1159     resources and exit.
1160 root 1.20
1161     This is useful when you allow a large number of threads (e.g. 100 or
1162     1000) to allow for extremely high load situations, but want to free
1163     resources under normal circumstances (1000 threads can easily
1164     consume 30MB of RAM).
1165    
1166     The default is probably ok in most situations, especially if thread
1167     creation is fast. If thread creation is very slow on your system you
1168     might want to use larger values.
1169    
1170 root 1.46 IO::AIO::idle_timeout $seconds
1171     Sets the minimum idle timeout (default 10) after which worker
1172     threads are allowed to exit. SEe "IO::AIO::max_idle".
1173    
1174 root 1.30 IO::AIO::max_outstanding $maxreqs
1175 root 1.20 This is a very bad function to use in interactive programs because
1176     it blocks, and a bad way to reduce concurrency because it is
1177     inexact: Better use an "aio_group" together with a feed callback.
1178    
1179 root 1.25 Sets the maximum number of outstanding requests to $nreqs. If you do
1180 root 1.20 queue up more than this number of requests, the next call to the
1181     "poll_cb" (and "poll_some" and other functions calling "poll_cb")
1182     function will block until the limit is no longer exceeded.
1183    
1184     The default value is very large, so there is no practical limit on
1185     the number of outstanding requests.
1186    
1187     You can still queue as many requests as you want. Therefore,
1188 root 1.30 "max_outstanding" is mainly useful in simple scripts (with low
1189 root 1.20 values) or as a stop gap to shield against fatal memory overflow
1190     (with large values).
1191 root 1.1
1192 root 1.19 STATISTICAL INFORMATION
1193 root 1.20 IO::AIO::nreqs
1194     Returns the number of requests currently in the ready, execute or
1195     pending states (i.e. for which their callback has not been invoked
1196     yet).
1197    
1198     Example: wait till there are no outstanding requests anymore:
1199    
1200     IO::AIO::poll_wait, IO::AIO::poll_cb
1201     while IO::AIO::nreqs;
1202    
1203     IO::AIO::nready
1204     Returns the number of requests currently in the ready state (not yet
1205     executed).
1206    
1207     IO::AIO::npending
1208     Returns the number of requests currently in the pending state
1209     (executed, but not yet processed by poll_cb).
1210 root 1.19
1211 root 1.38 MISCELLANEOUS FUNCTIONS
1212     IO::AIO implements some functions that might be useful, but are not
1213     asynchronous.
1214    
1215     IO::AIO::sendfile $ofh, $ifh, $offset, $count
1216     Calls the "eio_sendfile_sync" function, which is like
1217     "aio_sendfile", but is blocking (this makes most sense if you know
1218     the input data is likely cached already and the output filehandle is
1219     set to non-blocking operations).
1220    
1221     Returns the number of bytes copied, or -1 on error.
1222    
1223     IO::AIO::fadvise $fh, $offset, $len, $advice
1224 root 1.44 Simply calls the "posix_fadvise" function (see its manpage for
1225 root 1.38 details). The following advice constants are avaiable:
1226     "IO::AIO::FADV_NORMAL", "IO::AIO::FADV_SEQUENTIAL",
1227     "IO::AIO::FADV_RANDOM", "IO::AIO::FADV_NOREUSE",
1228     "IO::AIO::FADV_WILLNEED", "IO::AIO::FADV_DONTNEED".
1229    
1230     On systems that do not implement "posix_fadvise", this function
1231     returns ENOSYS, otherwise the return value of "posix_fadvise".
1232    
1233 root 1.44 IO::AIO::madvise $scalar, $offset, $len, $advice
1234     Simply calls the "posix_madvise" function (see its manpage for
1235     details). The following advice constants are avaiable:
1236     "IO::AIO::MADV_NORMAL", "IO::AIO::MADV_SEQUENTIAL",
1237     "IO::AIO::MADV_RANDOM", "IO::AIO::MADV_WILLNEED",
1238     "IO::AIO::MADV_DONTNEED".
1239    
1240     On systems that do not implement "posix_madvise", this function
1241     returns ENOSYS, otherwise the return value of "posix_madvise".
1242    
1243     IO::AIO::mprotect $scalar, $offset, $len, $protect
1244     Simply calls the "mprotect" function on the preferably AIO::mmap'ed
1245     $scalar (see its manpage for details). The following protect
1246     constants are avaiable: "IO::AIO::PROT_NONE", "IO::AIO::PROT_READ",
1247     "IO::AIO::PROT_WRITE", "IO::AIO::PROT_EXEC".
1248    
1249     On systems that do not implement "mprotect", this function returns
1250     ENOSYS, otherwise the return value of "mprotect".
1251    
1252 root 1.43 IO::AIO::mmap $scalar, $length, $prot, $flags, $fh[, $offset]
1253     Memory-maps a file (or anonymous memory range) and attaches it to
1254     the given $scalar, which will act like a string scalar.
1255    
1256     The only operations allowed on the scalar are "substr"/"vec" that
1257     don't change the string length, and most read-only operations such
1258     as copying it or searching it with regexes and so on.
1259    
1260     Anything else is unsafe and will, at best, result in memory leaks.
1261    
1262     The memory map associated with the $scalar is automatically removed
1263     when the $scalar is destroyed, or when the "IO::AIO::mmap" or
1264     "IO::AIO::munmap" functions are called.
1265    
1266     This calls the "mmap"(2) function internally. See your system's
1267     manual page for details on the $length, $prot and $flags parameters.
1268    
1269     The $length must be larger than zero and smaller than the actual
1270     filesize.
1271    
1272     $prot is a combination of "IO::AIO::PROT_NONE",
1273     "IO::AIO::PROT_EXEC", "IO::AIO::PROT_READ" and/or
1274     "IO::AIO::PROT_WRITE",
1275    
1276     $flags can be a combination of "IO::AIO::MAP_SHARED" or
1277     "IO::AIO::MAP_PRIVATE", or a number of system-specific flags (when
1278     not available, the are defined as 0): "IO::AIO::MAP_ANONYMOUS"
1279     (which is set to "MAP_ANON" if your system only provides this
1280     constant), "IO::AIO::MAP_HUGETLB", "IO::AIO::MAP_LOCKED",
1281     "IO::AIO::MAP_NORESERVE", "IO::AIO::MAP_POPULATE" or
1282     "IO::AIO::MAP_NONBLOCK"
1283    
1284     If $fh is "undef", then a file descriptor of -1 is passed.
1285    
1286     $offset is the offset from the start of the file - it generally must
1287     be a multiple of "IO::AIO::PAGESIZE" and defaults to 0.
1288    
1289     Example:
1290    
1291     use Digest::MD5;
1292     use IO::AIO;
1293    
1294     open my $fh, "<verybigfile"
1295     or die "$!";
1296    
1297     IO::AIO::mmap my $data, -s $fh, IO::AIO::PROT_READ, IO::AIO::MAP_SHARED, $fh
1298     or die "verybigfile: $!";
1299    
1300     my $fast_md5 = md5 $data;
1301    
1302     IO::AIO::munmap $scalar
1303     Removes a previous mmap and undefines the $scalar.
1304    
1305 root 1.44 IO::AIO::munlock $scalar, $offset = 0, $length = undef
1306     Calls the "munlock" function, undoing the effects of a previous
1307     "aio_mlock" call (see its description for details).
1308 root 1.43
1309     IO::AIO::munlockall
1310     Calls the "munlockall" function.
1311    
1312     On systems that do not implement "munlockall", this function returns
1313     ENOSYS, otherwise the return value of "munlockall".
1314    
1315     EVENT LOOP INTEGRATION
1316     It is recommended to use AnyEvent::AIO to integrate IO::AIO
1317     automatically into many event loops:
1318    
1319     # AnyEvent integration (EV, Event, Glib, Tk, POE, urxvt, pureperl...)
1320     use AnyEvent::AIO;
1321    
1322     You can also integrate IO::AIO manually into many event loops, here are
1323     some examples of how to do this:
1324    
1325     # EV integration
1326     my $aio_w = EV::io IO::AIO::poll_fileno, EV::READ, \&IO::AIO::poll_cb;
1327    
1328     # Event integration
1329     Event->io (fd => IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
1330     poll => 'r',
1331     cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
1332    
1333     # Glib/Gtk2 integration
1334     add_watch Glib::IO IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
1335     in => sub { IO::AIO::poll_cb; 1 };
1336    
1337     # Tk integration
1338     Tk::Event::IO->fileevent (IO::AIO::poll_fileno, "",
1339     readable => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
1340    
1341     # Danga::Socket integration
1342     Danga::Socket->AddOtherFds (IO::AIO::poll_fileno =>
1343     \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
1344    
1345 root 1.9 FORK BEHAVIOUR
1346 root 1.20 This module should do "the right thing" when the process using it forks:
1347 root 1.18
1348 root 1.20 Before the fork, IO::AIO enters a quiescent state where no requests can
1349     be added in other threads and no results will be processed. After the
1350     fork the parent simply leaves the quiescent state and continues
1351     request/result processing, while the child frees the request/result
1352     queue (so that the requests started before the fork will only be handled
1353     in the parent). Threads will be started on demand until the limit set in
1354     the parent process has been reached again.
1355    
1356     In short: the parent will, after a short pause, continue as if fork had
1357     not been called, while the child will act as if IO::AIO has not been
1358     used yet.
1359 root 1.18
1360     MEMORY USAGE
1361 root 1.20 Per-request usage:
1362 root 1.18
1363 root 1.20 Each aio request uses - depending on your architecture - around 100-200
1364     bytes of memory. In addition, stat requests need a stat buffer (possibly
1365     a few hundred bytes), readdir requires a result buffer and so on. Perl
1366     scalars and other data passed into aio requests will also be locked and
1367     will consume memory till the request has entered the done state.
1368    
1369 root 1.25 This is not awfully much, so queuing lots of requests is not usually a
1370 root 1.20 problem.
1371    
1372     Per-thread usage:
1373    
1374     In the execution phase, some aio requests require more memory for
1375     temporary buffers, and each thread requires a stack and other data
1376     structures (usually around 16k-128k, depending on the OS).
1377 root 1.18
1378     KNOWN BUGS
1379 root 1.20 Known bugs will be fixed in the next release.
1380 root 1.9
1381 root 1.1 SEE ALSO
1382 root 1.30 AnyEvent::AIO for easy integration into event loops, Coro::AIO for a
1383     more natural syntax.
1384 root 1.1
1385     AUTHOR
1386 root 1.20 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
1387     http://home.schmorp.de/
1388 root 1.1