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Revision: 1.1
Committed: Sun Jul 10 17:07:44 2005 UTC (18 years, 10 months ago) by root
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# Content
1 NAME
2 IO::AIO - Asynchronous Input/Output
3
4 SYNOPSIS
5 use IO::AIO;
6
7 DESCRIPTION
8 This module implements asynchronous I/O using whatever means your
9 operating system supports. Currently, it falls back to Linux::AIO if
10 that module is available, or uses pthreads to emulato aio functionality.
11
12 Currently, in this module a number of threads are started that execute
13 your read/writes and signal their completion. You don't need thread
14 support in your libc or perl, and the threads created by this module
15 will not be visible to the pthreads library.
16
17 Although the module will work with in the presence of other threads, it
18 is not reentrant, so use appropriate locking yourself.
19
20 API NOTES
21 All the "aio_*" calls are more or less thin wrappers around the syscall
22 with the same name (sans "aio_"). The arguments are similar or
23 identical, and they all accept an additional $callback argument which
24 must be a code reference. This code reference will get called with the
25 syscall return code (e.g. most syscalls return -1 on error, unlike perl,
26 which usually delivers "false") as it's sole argument when the given
27 syscall has been executed asynchronously.
28
29 All functions that expect a filehandle will also accept a file
30 descriptor.
31
32 The filenames you pass to these routines *must* be absolute. The reason
33 is that at the time the request is being executed, the current working
34 directory could have changed. Alternatively, you can make sure that you
35 never change the current working directory.
36
37 IO::AIO::min_parallel $nthreads
38 Set the minimum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. The default is
39 1, which means a single asynchronous operation can be done at one
40 time (the number of outstanding operations, however, is unlimited).
41
42 It is recommended to keep the number of threads low, as some linux
43 kernel versions will scale negatively with the number of threads
44 (higher parallelity => MUCH higher latency).
45
46 Under normal circumstances you don't need to call this function, as
47 this module automatically starts a single async thread.
48
49 IO::AIO::max_parallel $nthreads
50 Sets the maximum number of AIO threads to $nthreads. If more than
51 the specified number of threads are currently running, kill them.
52 This function blocks until the limit is reached.
53
54 This module automatically runs "max_parallel 0" at program end, to
55 ensure that all threads are killed and that there are no outstanding
56 requests.
57
58 Under normal circumstances you don't need to call this function.
59
60 $fileno = IO::AIO::poll_fileno
61 Return the *request result pipe filehandle*. This filehandle must be
62 polled for reading by some mechanism outside this module (e.g. Event
63 or select, see below). If the pipe becomes readable you have to call
64 "poll_cb" to check the results.
65
66 See "poll_cb" for an example.
67
68 IO::AIO::poll_cb
69 Process all outstanding events on the result pipe. You have to call
70 this regularly. Returns the number of events processed. Returns
71 immediately when no events are outstanding.
72
73 You can use Event to multiplex, e.g.:
74
75 Event->io (fd => IO::AIO::poll_fileno,
76 poll => 'r', async => 1,
77 cb => \&IO::AIO::poll_cb);
78
79 IO::AIO::poll_wait
80 Wait till the result filehandle becomes ready for reading (simply
81 does a select on the filehandle. This is useful if you want to
82 synchronously wait for some requests to finish).
83
84 See "nreqs" for an example.
85
86 IO::AIO::nreqs
87 Returns the number of requests currently outstanding.
88
89 Example: wait till there are no outstanding requests anymore:
90
91 IO::AIO::poll_wait, IO::AIO::poll_cb
92 while IO::AIO::nreqs;
93
94 aio_open $pathname, $flags, $mode, $callback
95 Asynchronously open or create a file and call the callback with the
96 filedescriptor (NOT a perl filehandle, sorry for that, but watch
97 out, this might change in the future).
98
99 The $mode argument is a bitmask. See the "Fcntl" module for a list.
100 They are the same as used in "sysopen".
101
102 Example:
103
104 aio_open "/etc/passwd", O_RDONLY, 0, sub {
105 if ($_[0] >= 0) {
106 open my $fh, "<&$_[0]"; # create a copy for perl
107 aio_close $_[0], sub { }; # close the aio handle
108 print "open successful, fh is $fh\n";
109 ...
110 } else {
111 die "open failed: $!\n";
112 }
113 };
114
115 aio_close $fh, $callback
116 Asynchronously close a file and call the callback with the result
117 code.
118
119 aio_read $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset,$callback
120 aio_write $fh,$offset,$length, $data,$dataoffset,$callback
121 Reads or writes "length" bytes from the specified "fh" and "offset"
122 into the scalar given by "data" and offset "dataoffset" and calls
123 the callback without the actual number of bytes read (or -1 on
124 error, just like the syscall).
125
126 Example: Read 15 bytes at offset 7 into scalar $buffer, strating at
127 offset 0 within the scalar:
128
129 aio_read $fh, 7, 15, $buffer, 0, sub {
130 $_[0] >= 0 or die "read error: $!";
131 print "read <$buffer>\n";
132 };
133
134 aio_readahead $fh,$offset,$length, $callback
135 Asynchronously reads the specified byte range into the page cache,
136 using the "readahead" syscall.
137
138 readahead() populates the page cache with data from a file so that
139 subsequent reads from that file will not block on disk I/O. The
140 $offset argument specifies the starting point from which data is to
141 be read and $length specifies the number of bytes to be read. I/O is
142 performed in whole pages, so that offset is effectively rounded down
143 to a page boundary and bytes are read up to the next page boundary
144 greater than or equal to (off-set+length). aio_readahead() does not
145 read beyond the end of the file. The current file offset of the file
146 is left unchanged.
147
148 aio_stat $fh_or_path, $callback
149 aio_lstat $fh, $callback
150 Works like perl's "stat" or "lstat" in void context. The callback
151 will be called after the stat and the results will be available
152 using "stat _" or "-s _" etc...
153
154 The pathname passed to "aio_stat" must be absolute. See API NOTES,
155 above, for an explanation.
156
157 Currently, the stats are always 64-bit-stats, i.e. instead of
158 returning an error when stat'ing a large file, the results will be
159 silently truncated unless perl itself is compiled with large file
160 support.
161
162 Example: Print the length of /etc/passwd:
163
164 aio_stat "/etc/passwd", sub {
165 $_[0] and die "stat failed: $!";
166 print "size is ", -s _, "\n";
167 };
168
169 aio_unlink $pathname, $callback
170 Asynchronously unlink (delete) a file and call the callback with the
171 result code.
172
173 aio_fsync $fh, $callback
174 Asynchronously call fsync on the given filehandle and call the
175 callback with the fsync result code.
176
177 aio_fdatasync $fh, $callback
178 Asynchronously call fdatasync on the given filehandle and call the
179 callback with the fdatasync result code.
180
181 BUGS
182 This module has been extensively tested in a large and very busy
183 webserver for many years now.
184
185 - aio_open gives a fd, but all other functions expect a perl filehandle.
186
187 SEE ALSO
188 Coro.
189
190 AUTHOR
191 Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
192 http://home.schmorp.de/
193