[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hugs vs GHC (again)was: Re: Somerandomnewbiequestions

[Glynn Clements]

Ben Rudiak-Gould wrote:

>  >Actually, If I were writing new haskell libraries, I would use mmap
>  >whenever I could for accessing files. not only does it make the file
>  >pointer problem go away, but it can be drastically more efficient.
> 
> I'm not sure this is a good idea, because GHC really needs non-blocking 
> I/O to support its thread model, and memory-mapped I/O always blocks.

If, by "blocks", you mean that execution will be suspended until the
data has been read from the device into the buffer cache, then Unix
non-blocking I/O (i.e. O_NONBLOCK) also blocks.

Calling read() on a descriptor which corresponds to a regular file
won't report EAGAIN, even if the file is on a particularly slow device
(floppy, CD-ROM, NFS etc).

Essentially, reading data from regular files is always deemed to occur
"soon", so the usual mechanisms for dealing with "slow" I/O (i.e. 
pipes, FIFOs, character devices, sockets) don't work. This applies
equally to non-blocking I/O (O_NONBLOCK), asynchronous I/O (O_ASYNC),
select(), poll() etc.

In that regard, mmap()ed I/O is no better or worse than conventional
non-blocking I/O.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>