Spawn

Spawn

Limbo supports the creation of processes operating on a given function via the spawn statement. Functions passed to spawn cannot have a return value.

Inferno processes share memory with their parent processes which spawn them, bar the process's respective stack. Inferno processes are pre-emptively scheduled by the Inferno kernel. These processes are analogous, but not equivocal to, threads in unix-like systems.

Synchronization between processes is recommended to be done through channels.

For further reading on potential inspirations for Inferno processes, see rfork(2).

Source

spawn.b:31,40

This section spawns four processes all of which will attempt to print to their standard output. Two functions spawn running the quacker() function and two function spawn running the summer() function with varying arguments.

Note: The call to sleep() in this context within the init() function.

Demo

; limbo spawn.b
; spawn
quack!
Sum (2): 0
quack!
Sum (3): 0
Sum (2): 1
Sum (3): 1
Sum (2): 3
Sum (3): 3
Final sum (2): 3
Sum (3): 6
Final sum (3): 6
; 

Exercises

• How many different orders do you see the print statements occur in?
• What happens if you remove the sleep?