[Haskell-cafe] Re: Waiting for thread to finish

[ChrisK]

Maurí­cio wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> After I have spawned a thread with
> 'forkIO', how can I check if that
> thread work has finished already?
> Or wait for it?
> 
> Thanks,
> Maurício

The best way to do this is using Control.Exception.finally:

> myFork :: IO () -> IO (ThreadId,MVar ())
> myFork todo =
>   m <- newEmptyMVar
>   tid <- forkIO (finally todo (tryPutMVar m ()))
>   return (tid,m)

No other part of the program should write to the MVar except
the finally clause.

The rest of the program can check (isEmptyMVar m) as a non-blocking
way to see if the thread is still running.  Or use (swapMVar m ()) as
a way to block until the MVar has been filled as a way of blocking
until the thread is finished.

These techniques are needed because forkIO is a very lightweight threading
mechanism.  Adding precisely the features you need makes for good performance
control, as seen in the great computer language shootout benchmarks.

Cheers,
  Chris