ivar-simple: Write once concurrency primitives.

[ concurrency, library, mit ] [ Propose Tags ]

IVars are write-once (immutable) variables.

They can be read, an operation that will block until a value was written to the variable. They can be written to exactly once.


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Versions [RSS] 0.1.0.0, 0.1.0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.3.1, 0.3.2, 0.3.3
Dependencies base (<5) [details]
License MIT
Copyright (c) 2008-2012 Bertram Felgenhauer
Author
Maintainer Bertram Felgenhauer <int-e@gmx.de>
Category Concurrency
Uploaded by BertramFelgenhauer at 2012-07-23T12:02:33Z
Distributions NixOS:0.3.3
Reverse Dependencies 1 direct, 0 indirect [details]
Downloads 4550 total (23 in the last 30 days)
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Readme for ivar-simple-0.2

[back to package description]
What is this?
-------------

ivar-simple provides immutable, write-once variables (IVars) in the
Data.IVar.Simple module.

It also provides two more experimental channel implementations built on
top of IVars,

    Data.IVar.Simple.IChan:
        multi-cast channels with write-once semantics.

    Data.IVar.Simple.MIChan:
        channels with write semantics similar to Control.Concurrent.Chan

Comparison to data-ivar
-----------------------

Both data-ivar and ivar-simple provide a write-once variable. That's where
the similarities end:

- Reading an IVar with data-ivar is an IO operation. In ivar-simple it's a
  pure function.
- data-ivar provides a 'Reader' monoid, monad, etc. for reading from one of
  several IVars. ivar-simple has no such functionality.
- The data-ivar implementation can, in principle, add arbitrary IO actions
  that are called when an IVar is written. (This detail is not exposed,
  however)
- Technically, ivar-simple tries for efficiency by exploiting the existing
  locking structures in the RTS; in particular, reading a full IVar for a
  second time is as cheap as evaluating a record selector.
  I have no performance numbers for this.