sends don't block, right?

[Joe Armstrong]

On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:

> From: "Joe Armstrong" <joe@REDACTED>
> >   If you use !!  at the top  level of your code then you can "see" the
> > RPC - my brain goes (RPC this  might be slow - take care, and RPC this
> > will synchronize any outstanding asynchronous  message) - so I can see
> > what I'm doing.
> 
> You make a very nice argument for the !! operator, while explaining some basic
> Erlang philosophy. If only it was easy to specify timeouts, I'd be sold!
> 
> /Vlad
> 

  I wondered about the following:

  If we make the following one line addition to erl_parse.yrl:

  expr_100 -> expr_150 '!' '!' expr_100:
     {call, line('$1'),{atom, line('$1'), rpc},['$1', '$4']}.

  Then A !!  B just gets expanded into the  *local* function rpc(A, B)
and  the user is  free to  add their  own definition  of rcp/2  to the
module concerned.

So in one module I might say:

   rpc(Pid, Q) ->
       Pid ! {replyTo, self(), replyAs, Pid, Q},
       receive
	   {Pid, Reply} ->
	       Reply
       end. 

In another

   rpc(Pid, Q) ->
       Pid ! {self(), Q},
       receive
   	 {Pid, Reply} ->
   	    Reply;
       after 1000 ->
   	    exit(oops)
       end. 

In another

   -include("rpc1.hrl").

In another:

   rpc(Pid, Q) ->
   	gen_server:call(....)

  This is more or less how I program - I want all the !!'s to work the
same way in a given scope. ie all of then have timeouts or none, etc.

/Joe