[Pdx-pm] Q about ithreads && signals

[Tom Phoenix]

On Sat, 16 Nov 2002, Joshua Hoblitt wrote:

>         eval {
>                 local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { &get_doc };
>                 ualarm 10_000_000, 10_000_000;
>                 while(1) { sleep; }
>         };

I'm not sure why you're using the eval block there. If you don't want to
check $@ to find out why it exited, that can be okay; but you should
probably add a comment saying why you don't care that you just trapped a
fatal error. (Of course, since no code follows that eval (does it?),
you've simply made the fatal error silent. :-)

And maybe I'm just too allergy-plagued and -medicated tonight to see
clearly. Is there some advantage to using that first line inside the eval
over this simpler one?

	local $SIG{ALRM} = \&get_doc;

For that matter, why local?

Have you tried throwing some debugging output statements into this? Like
this one...

    warn "Entered ALRM handler: " . localtime;

With a few of those, you may be able to tell whether your handler is being
called when you think it is, among other things. And when it's returning,
too:

    warn "Returning from ALRM handler: " . localtime;

Again, I'm on medication tonight, so I shouldn't be operating heavy
machinery or thread-bearing code. But what happens if your handler takes
more than ten seconds to return?

Good luck with it!

--Tom Phoenix