Represents forks (child processes) as objects and makes interaction with forks easy.
- Object oriented usage of forks
- Easy-to-use implementation of future (
Fork.future { computation }.call # => result) - Provides facilities for IO between parent and fork
- Supports sending ruby objects to the forked process
- Supports reading ruby objects from the forked process
gem install fork
An example using a future:
def fib(n) n < 2 ? n : fib(n-1)+fib(n-2); end # <-- bad implementation of fibonacci
future = Fork.future do
fib(35)
end
# do something expensive in the parent process
puts future.call # this blocks, until the fork finished, and returns the last value
A more complex example, using some of Fork's features:
# Create a fork with two-directional IO, which returns values and raises
# exceptions in the parent process.
fork = Fork.new :to_fork, :from_fork do |fork|
while received = fork.receive_object
p :fork_received => received
end
end
fork.execute # spawn child process and start executing
fork.send_object(123)
puts "Fork runs as process with pid #{fork.pid}"
fork.send_object(nil) # terminate the fork
fork.wait # wait until the fork is indeed terminated
puts "Fork is dead, as expected" if fork.dead?
You can use this code under the {file:LICENSE.txt BSD-2-Clause License}, free of charge. If you need a different license, please ask the author.