RE: [boost] Re: Non-blocking I/O

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-03-06 08:17:07

Lois Goldthwaite wrote:
> Not argument about the utility -- on the rare occasions when it's
> absolutely needed -- but is this really something a language can
> standardize? Isn't it dependent on a BIOS (or lower-level) facility that
> the operating system might not expose? As Beman pointed out,

The ACE library has been successfully ported to a huge number of platforms.
JAVA seems to be reasonably portable as well.  I don't believe that there is a
practical issue with OS's.  As for the need, either threads or some form of
non-blocking I/O is a essential for a broad range of applications.

> In many cases, the main use of kbhit() on PCs used to be so that you
> could ask the user to "hit any key to continue" -- whereas on Unix you
> had to "hit any key followed by the return key." As GUI interfaces have
> become popular, even this usage is dying out. And on PCs, IIRC, pipes

GUI systems use event based paradigms that don't require the GUI components to
block waiting for the next mouse click.  JAVA has clearly dealt with this, C++
could too.

.political_commentary on
From my perspective, for C++ to move forward we need to stop asking why we can't
do something on every platform and start looking at how to provide essential
things on as many platforms as possible.  The JAVA folks have done this well and
JAVA is flourishing as a result.  Clearly, they have learned to live with
subsets of standard libraries for devices that won't run GUI's, for example.
C++ could easily do the same...
.political_commentary off

Jeff