NAME

       Coro::Channel - message queues

SYNOPSIS

        use Coro;

        $q1 = new Coro::Channel <maxsize>;

        $q1->put ("xxx");
        print $q1->get;

        die unless $q1->size;

DESCRIPTION

       A Coro::Channel is the equivalent of a unix pipe (and similar to amiga message ports): you
       can put things into it on one end and read things out of it from the other end. If the
       capacity of the Channel is maxed out writers will block. Both ends of a Channel can be
       read/written from by as many coroutines as you want concurrently.

       You don't have to load "Coro::Channel" manually, it will be loaded automatically when you
       "use Coro" and call the "new" constructor.

       $q = new Coro:Channel $maxsize
           Create a new channel with the given maximum size (practically unlimited if "maxsize"
           is omitted). Giving a size of one gives you a traditional channel, i.e. a queue that
           can store only a single element (which means there will be no buffering, and "put"
           will wait until there is a corresponding "get" call). To buffer one element you have
           to specify 2, and so on.

       $q->put ($scalar)
           Put the given scalar into the queue.

       $q->get
           Return the next element from the queue, waiting if necessary.

       $q->shutdown
           Shuts down the Channel by pushing a virtual end marker onto it: This changes the
           behaviour of the Channel when it becomes or is empty to return "undef", almost as if
           infinitely many "undef" elements had been put into the queue.

           Specifically, this function wakes up any pending "get" calls and lets them return
           "undef", the same on future "get" calls. "size" will return the real number of stored
           elements, though.

           Another way to describe the behaviour is that "get" calls will not block when the
           queue becomes empty but immediately return "undef". This means that calls to "put"
           will work normally and the data will be returned on subsequent "get" calls.

           This method is useful to signal the end of data to any consumers, quite similar to an
           end of stream on e.g. a tcp socket: You have one or more producers that "put" data
           into the Channel and one or more consumers who "get" them. When all producers have
           finished producing data, a call to "shutdown" signals this fact to any consumers.

           A common implementation uses one or more threads that "get" from a channel until it
           returns "undef". To clean everything up, first "shutdown" the channel, then "join" the
           threads.

       $q->size
           Return the number of elements waiting to be consumed. Please note that:

             if ($q->size) {
                my $data = $q->get;
                ...
             }

           is not a race condition but instead works just fine. Note that the number of elements
           that wait can be larger than $maxsize, as it includes any coroutines waiting to put
           data into the channel (but not any shutdown condition).

           This means that the number returned is precisely the number of calls to "get" that
           will succeed instantly and return some data. Calling "shutdown" has no effect on this
           number.

AUTHOR

        Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de>
        http://home.schmorp.de/