Proposal: Control.Concurrent.Async

[Ross Paterson]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 02:26:51PM +0100, Simon Marlow wrote:
> On 14/06/2012 16:10, Ross Paterson wrote:
> > An alternative, equivalent interface for waitEither and friends would be
> >
> >    waitEither :: Async a ->  Async a ->  IO (Either SomeException a)
> >    waitEitherThrow :: Async a ->  Async a ->  IO a
> >
> > This might be conceptually simpler, leaving it to the user to decide
> > whether to mark the results with Left/Right, or something else, or not.
> > Similarly the Async now returned by waitAny and friends could be left
> > to the user.  That would leave the two sets of functions more in line.
> 
> I liked this suggestion at first, but later concluded that it isn't as 
> nice.  The problem is that to convert an 'Async a' to an 'Async (Either 
> a b)' has to be done when you create the Async in the first place, or 
> else you have to write some STM code to lift the result.  If you're 
> writing some STM code anyway, then there's little point in using waitEither.

The list functions have a similar issue: you have to give them the
right type when you create them if you want them together in a list.
Perhaps a convenient interface for the multiplexing part would be

data AsyncF a = forall r. AsyncF (Async r) (r -> a)

instance Functor AsyncF where
  fmap f (AsyncF a k) = AsyncF a (f . k)

waitSTMF :: AsyncF a -> STM (Either SomeException a)
waitSTMF (AsyncF a k) = fmap (fmap k) (waitSTM a)