On 02/04/2011 07:18 PM, Peter Alexander wrote:
I would like to be able to spawn a thread, which does a lot of work, and then
returns (in some way) the result of its computations to the main thread. I
would really like to avoid copying its results if possible.
Logically, what I would like is something like this:
class LotsOfData { ... }
void doStuff(LotsOfData d) { ... }
shared(LotsOfData[]) data;
void main()
{
spawn( &doWork );
while(true)
{
foreach (d; data)
doStuff(d);
}
}
void doWork()
{
LotsOfData d = new LotsOfData;
// lots of computation on d
data ~= d;
}
Essentially, the work that doWork does needs to be returned to the main thread
asynchronously, and obviously in a thread-safe manner.
What's the best way to do this? The above won't work because ~= isn't atomic,
so you can't do it on shared data.
(I have few exp in the paradigm, so don't believe me.)
It seems your problem is a typical case that cannot be safe as is. Essentially,
IIUC, you want a shared set of data to be fed (more generally: mutated) from a
thread, while another thread (here, the main one) processes bits of it. How can
this be correct as is --except as you say if mutating operations were atomic?
I think in such a case you /must/ have a communication protocal between both
tasks/threads. It is not due to language features (present ot not, this or that
way) but to the problem itself. Correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Denis
--
_________________
vita es estrany
spir.wikidot.com
