On Jan 18, 2006, at 2:59 PM, Benjamin Franksen wrote:
On Wednesday 18 January 2006 19:01, Dimitry Golubovsky wrote:
Is it possible to redirect a Handle (say stdout) somewhere only
within a running thread (started with forkIO) not touching the same
handle for the main and other threads?
I have a lot of code written with putStr(Ln) which was used in a
program acting as a filter, i. e. stdout was redirected by the
invoking shell. Now I want to run this code within a thread in other
program, but output must go to a file (or a pipe, or anywhere else a
file descriptor may be opened for). So fdToHandle is not good because
I need to modify the `stdout' only for that thread, not to create a
new Handle. Rewriting the code is not a convenient way (but will be
done if nothing else helps) because then I will need to pass that
handle around.
Isn't this _the_ real-world example perfectly matching Robert Dockins'
'threadlocal' proposal?
Yes, actually. This is precisely the use case that got me thinking
about threadlocal storage in the first place. I'm working on Shellac
(http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/msg17871.html) and
it turns out that redirecting the standard output handle for a
specific thread would be really nice. The obvious alternative is to
pass in a function of type (String -> IO ()) and pass it around, and
make sure to use it instead of putStr and friends. The non-obvious
alternative is some unsafePerformIO hackery, as just posted. Either
way, its ugly.
[snip]
Rob Dockins
Speak softly and drive a Sherman tank.
Laugh hard; it's a long way to the bank.
-- TMBG
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