On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 01:10:24PM +0200, Jos Visser wrote:
> Lots of Java programs simulate AIO by using threads. Almost all Java IO
> mechanisms are blocking and this means that doing interesting work while
> the IO is in progress requires some mechanism that involves a separate
> thread with a callback routine.
This is not AIO.
I am using "asynchronous I/O" (AIO) to refer to interrupt-driven
facilities such as the Unix aio_*() syscalls. (I recognize that
it is not uncommon to refer to non-blocking IO as asynchronous IO,
but I believe that I have been careful about clearly defining terms
in this thread.) The standard Java libraries perform blocking IO
dispatched from threads. Some Java programs, as you say, build a
single-threaded, non-blocking, event-dispatched IO mechanism on top
of this. Java does not, however, have any support for interrupts;
it is not possible to do AIO in Java.
- Damien
