[erlang-questions] Unidirectional linking?

[Igor Ribeiro Sucupira]

I was thinking about something like that right now, trying to convince
myself that it could work with a third process. :)  Thanks! I will try
it.

Best regards.
Igor.

--
"The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To
know how to do something well is to enjoy it." - Pearl S. Buck.


On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:34 AM, Joseph Wayne Norton
<norton@REDACTED> wrote:
>
> Igor -
>
> I suggest to add a simple proxy process (or add this functionality to the
> parent process if it is better suited) that has a receive clause for the
> operation's response, the operation's monitor exit, and an after clause with
> the operation's timeout.  If timeout occurs, you can demonitor and kill the
> operation's process.
>
> - Joe N
>
> On Wed, 25 May 2011 15:24:23 +0900, Igor Ribeiro Sucupira <igorrs@REDACTED>
> wrote:
>
>> I couldn't see a way of using monitors in this example. I would need
>> the child process to monitor its parent, but the child is busy
>> performing Op.
>>
>> Thanks.
>> Igor.
>>
>> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 3:16 AM, Bengt Kleberg
>> <bengt.kleberg@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>
>>> Greetings,
>>>
>>> Uni-directional links are created with erlang:monitor/2.
>>>
>>> Does this help?
>>>
>>>
>>> bengt
>>>
>>> On Wed, 2011-05-25 at 08:00 +0200, Igor Ribeiro Sucupira wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Suppose there is a heavy operation Op that in some cases takes so long
>>>> to finish that the caller loses interest in the result and gives up.
>>>>
>>>> I want to perform that operation in a way that allows me to:
>>>> 1) Interrupt its execution if it does not finish in N milliseconds.
>>>> 2) Interrupt its execution if the calling process exits (here I'm
>>>> already supposing Op has to be run in another Erlang process, due to
>>>> goal 1).
>>>>
>>>> To implement that, it seems unidirectional linking would be needed. Is
>>>> there another safe and convenient way to do it?
>>>>
>>>> The first idea I had was something like this:
>>>>
>>>> Parent = self(),
>>>> Child = spawn_link(fun() -> Parent ! (catch Op) end),
>>>> receive Result -> Result
>>>> after N -> unlink(Child), exit(Child, timeout), timeout
>>>> end.
>>>>
>>>> But, if Parent is killed by another process right after calling
>>>> unlink, Child would be left executing.
>>>> Another problem is that I don't want Parent to die if Child exits for
>>>> non-timeout reasons (although it seems very unlikely in the code
>>>> above, with the catch).
>>>>
>>>> I was now thinking of substituting unlink(Child) with
>>>> process_flag(trap_exit, true) and then kill Child, receive its exit
>>>> message, set trap_exit to false again (I'm assuming it was false), and
>>>> finally check if there were other exit messages (suiciding if it was
>>>> the case).
>>>>
>>>> But then the code would become too ugly, so I got lazy and decided to
>>>> post to this list.  :-)
>>>>
>>>> What do you think?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks.
>>>> Igor.
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>
> --
> norton@REDACTED