Re: [boost] Updated version of futures library

From: Johan Torp (johan.torp_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-06-02 13:01:16

Frank Mori Hess wrote:
> 
>> > My use case requires future_value.
>>
>> I generally try to follow the future-related discussions, but do not
>> recall
>> seeing an explanation of the specifics of your use case. Can you please
>> point me to one?
> 
> Oh, my use case is the "lifting of an ordinary function to an asynchronous
> one 
> that takes/returns future_value objects" I mentioned earlier in the post. 
> To 
> be more specific:
> 
> http://www.comedi.org/projects/libpoet/boostbook/doc/boostbook/html/poet/active_function.html
> 

To clarify some of my posts and another use case; I have been thinking a lot
about a lazy "passive function" which is rather analogous to an active
function. The difference is that evaluation work is not done by an
associated thread, but by a future-listening thread in it's wait, get or
is_ready calls. 

In general any function:
  R foo(A1 a1, A2 a2)
can be "lifted" to a passive or active function if any of it's arguments
needs to be supplied asynchronously. This can be done either totally;
  future<R> foo(future<A1> a1, future<A2> a2)
or partially;
  future<R> foo(future<A1> a1, A2 a2)

I hope that futures will be enough computationally powerful to implement
"passive lifting" and that it won't be too cumbersome for users to express
this.

Johan
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