Library for asynchronous non-blocking concurrency in Common Lisp. Quite similar to what green threads are for. In other buzzy words, it is a computation tree building library mixed with data-flow model for non-blocking, asynchronous and thread-safe execution.
-> (flow:atomically) operator marks atomic block of code that could be
dispatched concurrently - a basic unit of work in cl-flow.
>> (flow:serially) operator encloses forms for them to be executed serially,
but possibly in different threads, returning the value of the last atomic block
or flow.
~> (flow:concurrently) operator denotes forms that are going to be run in
parallel, returning list of block results in the same order they were specified.
->> (flow:dynamically) denotes block that generates new flow dynamically
during parent flow execution. In other words, injects (embeds) new dynamically
created flow into current one.
%> (flow:asynchronously) allows to split the flow and continue or interrupt
its execution at later time by calling #'continue-flow or #'interrupt-flow
functions from the lexical scope of the current block.
o> (flow:repeatedly) will short-circuit the flow specified inside the block
and execute it repeatedly in loop until condition returns nil. Result from the
last iteration will be passed to the next block.
Code is fully asynchronous and thread-safe with no blocking required (see Memory Model note below).
Results of previously executed block (denoted by ->) “flows” into a next code
block and is bound as argument to this next block.
For thread-safety cl-flow library uses lock-free atomic functions not defined
in CL standard and, unfortunately, not widely supported by implementations
either. This said, cl-flow is actually tested and known to work in:
Not tested for, but exptected to work in:
Other implementations should generally work too - only slowly - cl-flow
fallbacks to mutexes for synchronization on unsupported platforms.