Ruby » Ruby master

Feature #18965

Updated by byroot (Jean Boussier) over 2 years ago

Following the recent addition of a `timeout` parameter to `Queue#pop`, there are a handful of other improvements I'd like to make. 


 ### Batch insert 

 When using the queue for batch processing, it would be good to be able to push multiple elements at once: 

 Currently you have to call `push` repeatedly 

 ```ruby 
 items.each do |item| 
   queue.push(item) 
 end 
 ``` 

 That's wasteful because on each call we check wether the queue is closed, try to wakeup blocked threads, etc. 

 It would be much better if you could do: 

 ```ruby 
 queue.concat(items) queue.concat(item) 
 ``` 

 With of course both `nonblock` and `timeout` support. 

 Then there's the question of how `SizedQueue` would behave if it's not full, but still doesn't have space for all the elements. e.g. 
 ```ruby 
 queue = SizedQueue.new(10) 
 queue.concat(6.times.to_a) 
 queue.concat(6.times.to_a) # Block until there is 6 free slots? 
 ``` 

 I think the simplest would be to wait for enough space to append the entire set, because combined with a timeout, it would be awkward if only part of the array was concatenated. 


 ### Batch pop 

 Similarly, sometimes the consumer of a queue is capable of batching, and right now it's not efficient: 


 ```ruby 
 loop do 
   items = [queue.pop] 
   begin 
     99.times do 
       items << queue.pop(true) # true is for nonblock 
     end 
   rescue ThreadError # empty queue 
   end 
   process_items(items) 
 end 
 ``` 

 It would be much more efficient if `pop` accepted a `count` parameter: 

 ```ruby 
 loop do 
   items = queue.pop(count: 100) 
   process_items(items) 
 end 
 ``` 

 The behavior would be: 
   - Block if the queue is empty 
   - If it's not empty, return **up to** `count` items (Just like `Array#pop`) 


 ### Non blocking mode, without exception 

 As shown above, the current `nonblock` parameter is a bit awkward, because: 

   - It raises an exception, which is very expensive for a construct often used in "low level" code. 
   - The exception is `ThreadError`, so you may have to match the error message for `"queue empty"`, to make sure it doesn't come from a Mutex issue or something like that. 


 I believe that we could introduce a keyword argument: 

 ```ruby 
 Queue.new.pop(nonblock: true) # => nil 
 ``` 

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