Re: Non-blocking I/O

From: pinkfloydhomer_at_[hidden]
Date: 2001-03-06 03:46:58

--- In boost_at_y..., jeff_at_c... wrote:
> > I would like to help myself, but I'm not sure I am the best person 
> to 
> > design or implement such a library. If no one else will work on 
> this, 
> > I will have to do it myself, but then I probably will not be able 
> to 
> > make a good enough design that it deserved to be in boost. I would 
> > probably just make it work for my particular application, and no 
> one 
> > will ever benefit from it.
> 
> It seems to me that your core point about the standard library not 
> addressing async programming issues is absolutely correct.  The 
> interface you are postulating would most certainly be beneficial to 
> the proposed boost Socket library.  Socket programming is another 
> place where non-blocking control flow is needed for single threaded 
> applications.  Which brings me to a question: why not put the input 
> check in it's own thread?  
> 

I have been thinking about doing this from the start. But I run into
the same problem: threading is not portable.
But I may end up doing it after all. It is IMO the most beautiful
solution.

> If you are even thinking about exploring this, I suggest you take a 
> look at the ACE library
(http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html).  
> While it is overkill for what you are doing, this library has 
> portable async I/O support classes.

Looks very nice and very usable for a huge number of problems,
including mine. I was, however, thinking of using pthreads. I have
found a very nice win32 pthread library, so now pthreads are available
on all the platforms on which I would want my program to work.

This brings me to another topic altogether:
I can't see why C++ wouldn't have standard support for threading,
networking, simple graphics etc. I know it's not very portable in
terms of embedded systems, but so aren't a lot of standardized things.
If I write a networking application, it is not intended for use on a
microwave oven etc.
I really love what Java provides in it's standard library. Only
problem is the performance issue. A performance intensive application
is about 4 times faster in practice on the best C++ compilers compared
to the best Java compilers.