On 6/11/05, Peter Dimov <pdimov@mmltd.net> wrote: Let's take a step back. Why would I use the message queue at all in a single threaded program? Its whole purpose is to enable inter-thread communication, right?
One way to look at it is that a mq just provides a quality of service implementation detail for message passing. Message passing can be quite generic, in small talk function / method invocation is referred to as message passing. Buffering alone might be a reason rather than inter-thread communication. One day a really useful lib that supports abstraction of the end points and quality of service for message passing that resolves to a function call, internal process message queue, inter-process mechanism, inter machine mechanism and the like might appear. Being able to abstract the common locking mechanisms for this is important. It is my recurring thought that the named parameter library, serialisation lib, an improved concurrency lib and a socket lib have an important role to play in a generic architecture lib that supports such message passing abstractions that will allow us to build some pretty innovative flexibility in our designs. The concept of a zero overhead null mutex is essential to this. matt.