{"id":357,"date":"2015-02-24T07:42:22","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T07:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects.lsv.ens-paris-saclay.fr\/orchidsdoc\/?page_id=357"},"modified":"2017-12-05T19:43:07","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T19:43:07","slug":"the-timeout-module","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/projects.lsv.ens-paris-saclay.fr\/orchidsdoc\/?page_id=357","title":{"rendered":"The timeout module"},"content":{"rendered":"

The timeout<\/code> module is an extension module<\/a>. \u00a0Its purpose is to add new primitives to the Orchids language<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As a preliminary warning, using the timeout<\/code> module to kill useless Orchids threads is in general a bad idea, because Orchids is clever enough to kill them by itself.<\/p>\n

One may also think of using the timeout<\/code> module to wait for an event for some amount of time, and stop waiting once that has elapsed, but that is also a wrong idea. \u00a0Usually, the events we monitor have some form of time field, and the correct way to do this is something like:
\nexpect (<\/code>\u27e8what I am waiting for\u27e9 &&\u00a0<\/code>\u27e8my time field\u27e9<$timeout) goto<\/code>\u27e8wherever\u27e9;<\/code>
\nwhere $timeout<\/code> holds the final time after which we will no longer care whether\u00a0\u27e8what I am waiting for\u27e9 happened or not. \u00a0Orchids is clever enough to stop waiting after receiving the first event whose\u00a0\u27e8my time field\u27e9 field is larger than or equal to $timeout<\/code>, provided that\u00a0\u27e8my time field\u27e9 is flagged as monotonic, which is usually the case for time fields and sequence numbers.<\/p>\n

The timeout<\/code> module has a different purpose, and is meant to schedule so-called\u00a0.timeout<\/code> events to happen after some delay. \u00a0By delay<\/em>, we mean actual time, not any time field recorded in events. \u00a0The difference is best explained by a thought experiment. \u00a0Imagine you run Orchids on a file, holding events over a span of two hours. \u00a0Orchids will probably read all those events in a fraction of a second, but calling timeout(\"blah\", 60)<\/code> will only send a .timeout<\/code> event 60 seconds later, way after the whole file has been read.<\/p>\n

Configuration options<\/h3>\n

None.<\/p>\n

Primitives<\/h3>\n