Love threads?

[zac352]

http://love2d.org/wiki/love.thread.newThread
Data and files are the only things accepted.
What is data?

[giniu]

So what? Is this a question? Statement? Complain? Feature request? Even spamming bots add some more context from time to time - give others a chance, and spell what's on your mind. Anyway, let's assume it was a question, someone else might be interested in answer.

Yes, as documentation says - only File, FileData and string representing a file name are accepted (documentation skips it I think, but it works - you can check in background loading sample I made some time ago, just when threads were re-enabled in 0.7 branch).

Anyway, who needs more? Message passing concurrency is the way to go, look at how well Erlang behaves! Naked shared state, mutexes and semaphores are for bug fans and kids, so they can play with their electric train toy KISS and it is just simpler that way. The fact that you put code in separate file don't tempt you to use something from outside of thread which would make no much sense - and you split the code into multiple files anyway.

[bartbes]

Giniu, epic post.

[zac352]

So what? Is this a question? Statement? Complain? Feature request? Even spamming bots add some more context from time to time - give others a chance, and spell what's on your mind. Anyway, let's assume it was a question, someone else might be interested in answer.

Yes, as documentation says - only File, FileData and string representing a file name are accepted (documentation skips it I think, but it works - you can check in background loading sample I made some time ago, just when threads were re-enabled in 0.7 branch).

Anyway, who needs more? Message passing concurrency is the way to go, look at how well Erlang behaves! Naked shared state, mutexes and semaphores are for bug fans and kids, so they can play with their electric train toy KISS and it is just simpler that way. The fact that you put code in separate file don't tempt you to use something from outside of thread which would make no much sense - and you split the code into multiple files anyway.

Did you just write a short speech about how my thread sucks?

[thelinx]

Yes, and you better read it.

[zac352]

Yes, and you better read it.

I don't usually tl;dr unless the post is about 100 lines long..

[Jasoco]

What exactly is "data" in reference to anyway? What constitutes "data"?

[zac352]

What exactly is "data" in reference to anyway? What constitutes "data"?

... That's pretty much what I asked, then got a hate post about. You're brave.

[Jasoco]

Well I know what a file is. But what is data? This is a serious question. Can I send a function into a separate thread? Can threads talk to each other? I'm still confused and intrigued about them.

Also, you didn't really ask a question. You stated a fact. You should have said "What is Data?"

[nevon]

What exactly is "data" in reference to anyway? What constitutes "data"?

You can't really send a function. You can, however, send a file containing a function (that is hopefully then also called). You can either do this this easy way by simply making a separate file where you do what you want to do, or you can do this weird shit that bartbes did:

Code: Select all

local pollservthread = love.thread.newThread("pollserver", love.filesystem.newFileData(([[
require "socket"
sock = socket.udp()
t = love.thread.getThread()
while true do
	sip = t:demand("ip")
	sport = t:demand("port")
	info = "%s"
	sock:sendto("%s", sip, sport)
	sock:settimeout(2)
	local data, ip, port = sock:receivefrom()
	if not data then return t:send("name", false) end
	if data:sub(1, #info) == info and ip == sip then
		local name, version, additional = data:gmatch(info .. ":([^:]*):([^:]*):(.*)")()
		local args = {}
		for s in additional:gmatch("([^:]*)") do
			table.insert(args, s)
		end
		if name and version then
			t:send("name", name)
			t:send("version", version)
			--t:send("args", args)
		end
	end
	t:send("name", false)
end
]]):format(servbrowser.info, servbrowser.poll), "pollserver.lua"))

Don't ask me how it works or what the syntax for love.filesystem.newFileData is - because I don't know. However, it works.

Also, don't forget to do thread:start() after creating a thread. That tripped me up quite a bit.

As for threads talking to each other, yes they can. They can use message passing, using the methods: peek, demand, receive, and send.

I can write a small example below. The first file is our main thread, and the other is the thread we're creating.

Code: Select all

local t = love.thread.newThread("workhorse", "filebelow.lua") --Creating our thread and telling it to run the code from the file filebelow.lua
t:start()

function love.update(dt)
    local answer = t:receive("answer") -- The receive method tries to get a message called "answer" from the thread, but only if it's ready. Otherwise it just returns nil
    if answer then
        print("We've solved the mystery of life! It's "..answer)
    end
end

Code: Select all

local t = love.thread.getThread() -- Returns the current thread object
local answer = 21*2
t:send("answer", answer) -- Now that we have our answer, we send it back as a message called "answer".