Is there a way to protect a piece of critical code?

[Hendrik van Rooyen]

"robert" <no-spam at no-spam-no-spam.invalid> wrote:


> pushing data objects through an inter-thread queue is a major source for
trouble - as this thread shows again.
> Everybody builds up a new protocol and worries about Empty/Full,
Exception-handling/passing, None-Elements, ...
> I've noticed that those troubles disappear when a functional queue is used -
which is very easy with a functional language like Python.
> For example with
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/491281
>
>
> One would just use a  cq=CallQueue()
>
> On the producer side one would just write the functional code one wants to
execute in a target thread:
>
> cq.call( what_i_want_do_func )
>
>
> The consumer/receiver thread would just do (periodically) a non-blocking
>
> cq.receive()
>
>
> => Without any object fumbling, protocol worries and very fast.
>
> And note: This way - working with functional jobs - one can also "protect a
piece of critical code" most naturally and specifically for certain threads
without spreading locks throughout the code.
> Even things which are commonly claimed "forbidden" (even when using lots of
locks) can be magically done in perfect order and effectively this way. Think of
worker threads doing things in the GUI or in master / database owner threads
etc.
>
> Similarly discrete background thread jobs can be used in a functional style
this way:
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/491280
> ( an alternative for the laborious OO-centric threading.Thread which mostly is
a lazy copy from Java )
> or for higher job frequencies by using "default consumer threads" as also
shown in the 1st example of
> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/491281
>

Thank you - had a (very) quick look and I will return to it
later - It is not immediately obvious to my assembler
programmer's mentality - looks like in the one case
the thread starts up, does its job and then dies, and in
the other its a sort of "remote" daemon like engine,
that you can "tell what to do", from "here"...

Both concepts seem nice and I will try to wrap my head
around them properly.

So far I have only used dicts to pass functions around
in a relatively unimaginative static jump table like way...

Thanks.

- Hendrik