On Tue, May 11, 2004 at 02:06:51PM -0400, Dan Sugalski wrote: > At 1:10 PM -0400 5/11/04, Uri Guttman wrote: > > >i don't think there is a need for all those variants. why would alarm > >need any special opcode when it is just a timer with a delay of abs_time > >- NOW? let the coder handle that and lose the extra op codes. > > I didn't see any reason to not do absolute times as well as deltas. > It's no big deal either way.
You may need the distinction later. POE's mailing list has a thread with a periodicity of about six months: What happens when daylight-saving time comes or goes? The answer: All your short-term timers fire at once if the clock moves ahead, or everything stalls for an hour (or so) when it moves back. So far the best solution requires a distinction between absolute and relative timers: Adjust the relative timers to compensate for the shift, but leave the absolute ones alone. Relative timers tend to be used for things like timeouts and periodic polling. You don't want all your TCP connections to suddenly time out when the clock jumps ahead, and you don't want your log tailers to pause an hour when it skips back. However, you usually do want your absolute-timed jobs to run when the wall clock says they should be. Something to keep in mind. -- Rocco Caputo - http://poe.perl.org/
