[Oz] Ports need a close operation

[Denys Duchier]

pvr at info.ucl.ac.be (Peter Van Roy) writes:

> I suggest extending the NewPort operation with a Close operation

Send to a port is an instantaneous (asynchronous) operation.  To
preserve the current desirable semantics and distributed properties of
Send would mean that sending to a possibly closed port would
eventually result in an asynchronous failed delivery.  How would this
be (1) reflected, (2) handled.

I sympathize with your suggestion, but is it worth the trouble?  If
yes and if the technical problems can be overcome, I'd suggest to
simply reinstate the possibility to close _any_ port (which we had
prior to extending Oz with support for distribution).  If you don't
want to hand out the close capability, you can always hide the port
behind an abstraction.

Cheers,

-- 
Dr. Denys Duchier			Denys.Duchier at ps.uni-sb.de
Forschungsbereich Programmiersysteme	(Programming Systems Lab)
Universitaet des Saarlandes, Geb. 45	http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier
Postfach 15 11 50			Phone: +49 681 302 5618
66041 Saarbruecken, Germany		Fax:   +49 681 302 5615
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