On Tue, 2011-11-08 at 15:46 +1000, Nick Coghlan wrote:
On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Ron Adam <ron3200@gmail.com> wrote:
Generator API.
Outside generator <--> Inside generator
next() yield .send() .throw()
Inverted generator API
Outside cothread <--> Inside cothread
.resume() suspend() throw()
Where resume works like yield, (yield to cothread), and suspend() works like .send(). Throw() raises an exception at the resume() call, like .throw() raises an exception at the yield in a generator.
No, that doesn't make any sense.
Probably because I didn't explain it well enough.
When the coroutine throws an exception internally it's done - we don't *want* to preserve the stack any more, because something broke and we won't be resuming it.
You mean throw as in a natural occurring exception rather than one explicitly thrown. Different thing. In the case of raise, (or throws due to an error.) true, but that's not how throw() would work in an inverse generator API. If we throw an exception from the *inside*, it's not a coroutine error, it's re-raised at the handler in the resume() call, not in the coroutine itself. That could work with generators as well. Wish it did. The reason that makes sense to do in coroutines is we most likely already have a try except structure in the coroutine handler to catch the exit and return status exceptions, so why not take advantage of that and make it possibly for the coroutines to send out exceptions for other things. with a throw() from inside the coroutine. (and not unwind the stack like a raise would.) For the same reason you throw() an exception into a generator, you could throw an exception out of a coroutine. You don't *need* to do that with either of them. The alternative is to pass through the normal data channel and parse, test, and/or filter it out once it gets to the other side. An try-except around a data input can be very efficient at doing that with a lot less work.
Instead, we let the exception bubble up the stack and if nothing handles it, we pass it back to the thread that called resume().
Right, and we can't resume from there in that case.
The reason we need an explicit throw() is that the data request (or whatever it was we suspended to wait for) might fail - in that case, the thread calling resume() needs to be able to indicate this to the cothread by resuming with an exception.
Yes and no... Yes, that works, and no because it could work just as well the other way around. If generators had a throw keyword... def adder(count): exc = None total = n = 0 while n < count: try: if exc is None: x = yield else: x = throw exc # reraise exc in .send(), not here. # suspends here, and waits for new x. total += x # <-- error may be here. exc = None n += 1 except Exception as e: exc = e yield total In this case, the exception wouldn't bubble out, but be reraised at the .send() where it can be handled. I think that generators not being able to handle these types of things gracefully is a reason not to use them with coroutines. A program based on generator coroutines that you get an unexpected exception from needs to be completely restarted. That makes sense for small iterators, but not for larger programs.
The flow control parallels are like this:
Inside the generator/cothread: yield -> cothread.suspend() # Wait to be resumed return -> return # Finish normally raise -> raise # Bail out with an error
Outside the generator/cothread send() -> resume() # Resume execution normally (optionally providing data) throw() -> throw() # Resume execution with an exception
Don't worry about next() in this context, since it's just an alternate spelling for send(None).
Yes, about the next. And yes, this is the design in your cothread module example. :) Cheers, Ron