uni-events-2.2.1.0: Event handling for the uniform workbench

Events.Channels

Description

This is a bare-bones implementation of CML-style channels, IE no guards. Why not use NullGuardChannel you might ask? Because all the gunge we add to do guards makes it too inefficient.

To avoid memory-leaks we need to clean out superannuated registrations occasionally, as otherwise we will gradually run out of memory if the user continually polls a receive channel event, but no-one is sending anything. (The memory lost is potentially quite big, since it includes all the continuations we will never need.)

Although this is not expressed by the type, there are three possible states for the channel (1) we have >=0 queued send events and no queued receive events. (2) we have >=0 queued receive events and no queued send events. (3) we have both send and receive events queued, but they all come from the same synchronisation. When we have a new send event, and there are queued receive events not from the same synchronisation, we can match. Otherwise the send event must be queued. For receive events the situation is exactly the same in reverse.

Our quick and dirty strategy is to maintain an integer counter for the channel. This is initially 0 and on each send or receive registration changes as follows: 1) If we match an event set counter to 0. 2) If we try to match an event, but fail because the event was already matched by someone else (Anticipated), leave counter as it is. 3) If finally we have to queue an event, look at counter. If it exceeds 10, clean the queue and set counter to 0, otherwise increment it. "cleaning" means removing all items from the front of the queue which have flipped toggles.

Synopsis

Documentation

data Channel a Source

A synchronous channel

newChannel :: IO (Channel a)Source

Create a new channel