Re: [boost] [next gen future-promise] What to call the monadic return type?

Subject: Re: [boost] [next gen future-promise] What to call the monadic return type?
From: Gavin Lambert (gavinl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-05-25 22:19:25

On 26/05/2015 13:48, Hartmut Kaiser wrote:
>
>> I've got everything working except the sequence:
>>
>> promise<int> p;
>> p.set_value(5);
>> return p.get_future().get();
>>
>> This should reduce to a mov $5, %eax, but currently does not for an
>> unknown reason. I'm just about to go experiment and see why.
>
> I asked this question many times before: what is this good for in practice
> except for demonstrating some impressive compiler optimization capabilities?
> If I need to return the number '5' I'd usually write
>
>      return 5;
>
> in the first place...

Generally this sort of pattern comes up when implementing a generic 
method that is constrained (by base class or concept) to return a 
future<T>, but where the actual implementation can complete 
synchronously without waiting (eg. a filesystem API that normally reads 
data asynchronously, but in this particular case is being implemented by 
an in-memory filesystem that can reply instantly).

I'm assuming that the code Niall posted isn't literally written like 
that but is instead produced after inlining such generic method calls 
for a particular test case.