Bug #7088: Documentation of Timeout::timeout is wrong about which thread executes the block

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: zzak (zzak _)
• Target version: 2.0.0
• ruby -v: ruby 1.9.3p194 (2012-04-20) [i686-linux]

[rklemme (Robert Klemme)]

See http://rubydoc.info/stdlib/timeout/Timeout#timeout-class_method - it reads "The block will be executed on another thread and will be given one argument: sec." If you make the source code visible or look into the file timeout.rb in the library you'll see that the block is invoked from the current (calling) thread. The comment reads as if the author had wanted to do an implementation like this:

def timeout_1(timeout, &code)
raise ArgumentError, "Invalid timeout: %p" % [timeout] unless timeout > 0
raise ArgumentError, "No code to execute" if code.nil?

worker = Thread.new(&code)
worker.join(timeout) and worker.value
end

Note: this avoids bug #4285 at the expense of a potentially longer running thread. Killing the background thread would suffer the same issues.

[drbrain (Eric Hodel)]

• Category set to doc
• Target version set to 2.0.0

[zzak (zzak _)]

• Assignee set to zzak (zzak _)

[zzak (zzak _)]

How about we change that to: "The block will be executed on the current thread and will be given one argument: sec. While, the timer for sec number of seconds will run in another thread".

[drbrain (Eric Hodel)]

I think deleting the paragraph would be sufficient. We don't need to reveal the implementation details of timeout.

[zzak (zzak _)]

• Status changed from Open to Closed
• % Done changed from 0 to 100

This issue was solved with changeset r37145.
Robert, thank you for reporting this issue.
Your contribution to Ruby is greatly appreciated.
May Ruby be with you.

---

• lib/timeout.rb (timeout):
  Remove paragraph on wrong implementation detail.
  [ruby-core:47739] [Bug #7088]