PROPOSAL: Add newBroadcastChan :: IO (Chan a) to Control.Concurrent.Chan

[Merijn Verstraaten]

Since some people on IRC asked for an example implementation, two implementations spring to mind:

Implementation #1:

newBroadcastChan :: IO (Chan a)
newBroadcastChan = do
    hole <- newEmptyMVar
    readVar <- newMVar (error "reading from a TChan created by newBroadcastTChan; use dupTChan first")
    writeVar <- newMVar hole
    return (Chan readVar writeVar)

Pros:
 - Identical to TChan equivalent
 - Only one extra function to the API
Cons:
 - Accidental reads lead to crash

Implementation #2:

newtype BroadcastChan a = BChan (MVar (Stream a))

newBroadcastChan :: IO (BroadcastChan a)
newBroadcastChan = do
    hole <- newEmptyMVar
    writeVar <- newMVar hole
    return (BChan writeVar)

dupFromBroadcastChan :: BroadcastChan a -> IO (Chan a)
dupFromBroadcastChan (BChan writeVar) = do
    hole       <- readMVar writeVar
    newReadVar <- newMVar hole
    return (Chan newReadVar writeVar)

Pros
 - Prevents accidental reads from write-only Chan
Cons
 - Adds more new stuff to that API?

Cheers,
Merijn

On 09 Sep 2014, at 00:30 , Merijn Verstraaten <merijn at inconsistent.nl> wrote:
> Ola!
> 
> Control.Concurrent.STM.TChan has the “newBroadcastTChan :: STM (TChan a)”, this creates a “write-only” TChan to avoid any space leaks when a Chan is written too but never read from (for example, when dupTChan is used to hand a copy to threads). Unfortunately, no such variant seems to exist for the normal Chan? I have the following code:
> 
> foo :: Chan a -> IO Foo
> foo broadcast = do
>    newListener <- dupChan broadcast
>    forkIO $ doStuffWith newListener
> 
> This means the original Chan is never read from and much like the problem with TChan, values keep piling up in the original channel, causing a space leak. I propose adding
> 
> newBroadcastChan :: IO (Chan a)
> 
> The obvious Chan equivalent of newBroadcastTChan, which creates a write-only channel without read end, thus avoiding this space leak.
> 
> Discussion: 2 weeks?
> 
> Cheers,
> Merijn

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