spawn

Synopsis

spawn(f: function) -> fiber

Description

Spawns a new fiber to run f. Post semantics are used, so the current fiber (the one calling spawn()) continues to run until it reaches a suspension point.

Fibers are the primitive of choice to represent concurrency. Every time you need to increase the concurrency level, just spawn a fiber. Fibers are cooperative and only transfer control to other fibers in well-defined points (sync primitives, IO functions and any suspending function such as this_fiber.yield()). These points are also used by the cancellation API.

No two fibers from the same Lua VM run in parallel (even when the underlying VM’s thread pool has threads available).

spawn() is a global so it doesn’t need to be require()d.

fiber functions

join(self)

Read pthread_join().

Returns the values returned by the fiber’s start function. If that fiber exits with an error, that error is re-raised here (and fiber is considered joined).

detach(self)

Read pthread_detach().

If the GC collects the fiber handle, it’ll be detached.

cancel(self)

Read pthread_cancel().

fiber properties

cancellation_caught: boolean

Read PTHREAD_CANCELED.

joinable: boolean

Whether joinable.