Documentation in Control.Monad.STM.TMVar - isEmptyTMVar

Heinrich Apfelmus apfelmus at quantentunnel.de
Wed Oct 26 20:25:50 CEST 2011


Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:
> As of  stm-2.2.0.1, the documentation for the  isEmptyTMVar  function 
> [1] reads
> 
>   isEmptyTMVar :: TMVar a -> STM BoolSource
> 
>   Check whether a given TMVar is empty.
> 
>   Notice that the boolean value returned is just a snapshot of the state
>   of the TMVar. By the time you get to react on its result, the TMVar
>   may have been filled (or emptied) - so be extremely careful when using
>   this operation. Use tryTakeTMVar instead if possible.
> 
> This being software transactional memory, where everything is wrapped 
> into a call to the  atomically  function, I believe that the second 
> paragraph is now completely obsolete, to the point of being misleading 
> (it sure scared me). I would be relieved if someone could remove it. 
> Most likely, it was originally copied directly from the corresponding 
> documentation of  Control.Concurrent.MVar .
> 
>   [1]: 
> http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/stm/2.2.0.1/doc/html/Control-Concurrent-STM-TMVar.html#v:isEmptyTMVar 

I forgot to set a discussion period for this, but two weeks have passed 
and it seems to me that there is unanimous support for this 
documentation change (removing the second paragraph).

I would like to move this towards inclusion in the  stm  library. Should 
I make a track ticket? Or maybe a kind GHC guru shows mercy and applies 
the change as it is?


Best regards,
Heinrich Apfelmus

--
http://apfelmus.nfshost.com




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