[Swift-devel] problems with external dependencies

[Mihael Hategan]

On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 11:05 -0500, Michael Wilde wrote:
> On 3/23/09 2:26 AM, Ben Clifford wrote:
> 
> > At the moment, I think the only thing that will wait for an array to be 
> > closed is an app procedure taking that array as a parameter. When thats a 
> > file array, you will then get the file handling that you don't want.
> 
> Ah, but following up on Mihael's latest point: if on the other hand its 
> an array of externals, *then* a dummy app() like a localhost "sleep 0" 
> might give the desired effect of "wait on all members of a *set* of 
> externals".

I'm not sure why you need the extra app. You can pass it directly to
that step that computes the next set of parameters.

> 
> Then you might be able to say in some code:
> 
> if(wait(events)) {
>    stuff;
> }
> 
> where wait() returns true. Since an app() cant currently return true, it 
> needs to be wrapper in a compound that converts a file from wait() into 
> a true via readData(). Ive used that technique in oops. That could be 
> streamlined.
> 
> Did we establish that a compound proc() will, or will not, wait for all 
> of its args that are external() to be set before either starting, or 
> exiting?

There is no difference, from the "who waits for what" perspective
between external and non-external data (or at least there shouldn't be).
The only thing that external data does is to tell an app not to do any
file staging.

So no.