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From: Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com>
To: Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] non-blocking IO - threads
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 12:42:28 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CABH=_VTtd8K74j66EMpaJKb93KYuWiO9m=o7qVa3v0VTdSF+CA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202006022312.052NCMCR178629@darkstar.fourwinds.com>

On 6/2/20, Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:
>
> Maybe I should explain what I meant by messy.  To me, the issue with select is
> that in many cases one has to either keep a lot of state somewhere, or live with
> long response times while handlers complete.  Threads allowed handlers to be
> written in the "normal" way with state kept on the stack.
>
TOPS-10 had a nifty program called ptycon that would allow one to
control multiple login sessions, each on its own pseudo-terminal
device, from a single physical terminal.  In 1985 our software tools
group implemented a pseudo-terminal device driver for VMS, and I wrote
a program called ptycon-32.  It was multithreaded, with one thread of
control for each pseudo-terminal.  The problem is that VMS at the time
didn't have a threads package.  I had to roll my own threads by using
the asynchronous system traps (ASTs) delivered by completion of I/O to
the pseudo-terminals.  Talk about messy....

-Paul W.

  reply	other threads:[~2020-06-03 16:42 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-06-02 14:19 [TUHS] non-blocking IO Paul Ruizendaal
2020-06-02 17:45 ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 17:59   ` arnold
2020-06-02 18:53     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 19:18       ` Clem Cole
2020-06-02 21:15         ` Lawrence Stewart
2020-06-02 22:03           ` [TUHS] non-blocking IO - threads Jon Steinhart
2020-06-02 23:05             ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:09               ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:21                 ` Larry McVoy
2020-06-03  0:39                   ` Rob Pike
2020-06-02 23:12               ` Jon Steinhart
2020-06-03 16:42                 ` Paul Winalski [this message]
2020-06-03 17:57                   ` Jon Forrest
2020-06-03  5:38           ` [TUHS] Unix on the Arpanet Lars Brinkhoff
2020-06-03 12:23             ` Lawrence Stewart
2020-06-02 18:23   ` [TUHS] non-blocking IO Dan Cross
2020-06-02 18:56     ` Paul Winalski
2020-06-02 19:23       ` Clem Cole

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