Coro::Storable - offer a more fine-grained Storable interface
use Coro::Storable;
This module implements a few functions from the Storable module in a way so that
it cede's more often. Some applications (such as the Deliantra game server)
sometimes need to load large Storable objects without blocking the server for
a long time.
This is being implemented by using a perlio layer that feeds only small amounts
of data (4096 bytes per call) into Storable, and "Coro::cede"'ing
regularly (at most 100 times per second by default, though).
As Storable is not reentrant, this module also wraps most functions of the
Storable module so that only one freeze or thaw is done at any one moment (and
recursive invocations are not currently supported).
- $ref = thaw $pst
- Retrieve an object from the given $pst, which must have
been created with "Coro::Storable::freeze" or
"Storable::store_fd"/"Storable::store" (sorry, but
Storable uses incompatible formats for disk/mem objects).
This function will cede regularly.
- $pst = freeze $ref
- Freeze the given scalar into a Storable object. It uses the
same format as "Storable::store_fd".
This functino will cede regularly.
- $pst = nfreeze $ref
- Same as "freeze" but is compatible to
"Storable::nstore_fd" (note the "n").
- $pst = blocking_freeze $ref
- Same as "freeze" but is guaranteed to block. This
is useful e.g. in "Coro::Util::fork_eval" when you want to
serialise a data structure for use with the "thaw" function for
this module. You cannot use "Storable::freeze" for this as
Storable uses incompatible formats for memory and file images, and this
module uses file images.
- $pst = blocking_nfreeze $ref
- Same as "blocking_freeze" but uses
"nfreeze" internally.
- $guard = guard
- Acquire the Storable lock, for when you want to call
Storable yourself.
Note that this module already wraps all Storable functions, so there is
rarely the need to do this yourself.
Marc A. Lehmann <[email protected]>
http://software.schmorp.de/pkg/Coro.html