Re: RFC 86 (v1) IPC Mailboxes for Threads and Signals

>>>>> "NI" == Nick Ing-Simmons <[email protected]> writes:

  NI> Uri Guttman <[email protected]> writes:

  >> i think we do because a thread can block on a mailbox while it can't on
  >> an array. 

  NI> Why not ? - I see no reason that a "shared" array could not have 
  NI> whatever-it-takes to allow blocking.

then every op that could touch an array has to have code to support
blocking. i think that would be a mess. and what is the definition of
blocking on an array, is it empty? can i pop or shift it? how do you
handle atomicity? how do you specify a non-blocking access (poll) on an array?

mailboxes are defined to work fine with those requirements. a get on a
mailbox will block until one item is retrieved and that is an atoamic
operation. a get can be made non-blocking (polling) with a optional
argument.

uri

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