0d7597588d
Add a method to the mpsc::Receiver for producing a non-blocking iterator
Currently, the `mpsc::Receiver` offers methods for receiving values in both blocking (`recv`) and non-blocking (`try_recv`) flavours. However only blocking iteration over values is supported. This PR adds a non-blocking iterator to complement the `try_recv` method, just as the blocking iterator complements the `recv` method.
Use-case
-------------
I predominantly use rust in my work on real-time systems and in particular real-time audio generation/processing. I use `mpsc::channel`s to communicate between threads in a purely non-blocking manner. I.e. I might send messages from the GUI thread to the audio thread to update the state of the dsp-graph, or from the audio thread to the GUI thread to display the RMS of each node. These are just a couple examples (I'm probably using 30+ channels across my various projects). I almost exclusively use the `mpsc::Receiver::try_recv` method to avoid blocking any of the real-time threads and causing unwanted glitching/stuttering. Now that I mention it, I can't think of a single time that I personally have used the `recv` method (though I can of course see why it would be useful, and perhaps the common case for many people).
As a result of this experience, I can't help but feel there is a large hole in the `Receiver` API.
| blocking | non-blocking |
|------------|--------------------|
| `recv` | `try_recv` |
| `iter` | 🙀 |
For the most part, I've been working around this using `while let Ok(v) = r.try_recv() { ... }`, however as nice as this is, it is clearly no match for the Iterator API.
As an example, in the majority of my channel use cases I only want to check for *n* number of messages before breaking from the loop so that I don't miss the audio IO callback or hog the GUI thread for too long when an unexpectedly large number of messages are sent. Currently, I have to write something like this:
```rust
let mut take = 100;
while let Ok(msg) = rx.try_recv() {
// Do stuff with msg
if take == 0 {
break;
}
take -= 1;
}
```
or wrap the `try_recv` call in a `Range<usize>`/`FilterMap` iterator combo.
On the other hand, this PR would allow for the following:
```rust
for msg in rx.try_iter().take(100) {
// Do stuff with msg
}
```
I imagine this might also be useful to game devs, embedded or anyone doing message passing across real-time threads.
|
||
---|---|---|
.. | ||
collections | ||
ffi | ||
io | ||
net | ||
num | ||
os | ||
prelude | ||
rand | ||
sync | ||
sys | ||
thread | ||
time | ||
ascii.rs | ||
build.rs | ||
Cargo.toml | ||
env.rs | ||
error.rs | ||
fs.rs | ||
lib.rs | ||
macros.rs | ||
memchr.rs | ||
panic.rs | ||
panicking.rs | ||
path.rs | ||
primitive_docs.rs | ||
process.rs | ||
rt.rs | ||
rtdeps.rs |