[Twisted-Python] callLater(0) is A BIG LIE

[Jonathan Simms]

On Mon, Nov 01, 2004 at 12:22:52PM -0500, James Y Knight wrote:
> On Nov 1, 2004, at 5:41 AM, Jonathan Simms wrote:
> >I'd like to offer some reflections on the reactor and facilitate some
> >conversation on a subject that's been causing me much frustration:
> >
> >    the twisted idiom, "callLater(0)"
> >
> >While it seems that this is a DelayedCall, it really is a lie. It has
> >nothing to do with time at all, it is a very *convenient* lie that we
> >all have accepted, but is a lie nonetheless.
> >
> >We all know this means "call function f in the next reactor iteration",
> >but the semantics of callLater have to do with time, not reactor
> >iterations. In fact, in the API documentation, there is no reference to
> >reactor iterations, at all.
> 
> I think you are somewhat mistaken, or at least, your message here is 
> somewhat misleading. callLater(0) is not special, nor a lie. A reactor 
> iteration looks at the current time _once_, and calls all DelayedCalls 
> up until that point in time. This means that something like 
> "callLater(1, foo); sleep(2)" will *also* not call foo ASAP after the 
> function exits (even though its time has passed), but will wait until 
> the next reactor iteration.
> 
> This is a general rule: no matter what the time value, callLaters() are 
> supposed to happen after network I/O has next been processed. It is not 
> brokenness, it's just a decision. You need to have *some* scheduling of 
> timed events and IO events, and Twisted chose to alternate the two. 
> That is a reasonable thing to do, as it helps prevent starvation of IO 
> by timed events.
> 
> I take it libevent chose to always prefer timed events over network IO.

I believe that may be the case, from my limited grokking of the libevent
source it seems that depends on the underlying API that libevent is using. 

> 
> James
> 
> 
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