NAME
Future::AsyncAwait - deferred subroutine syntax for futures
SYNOPSIS
use Future::AsyncAwait;
async sub do_a_thing
{
my $first = await do_first_thing();
my $second = await do_second_thing();
return combine_things( $first, $second );
}
do_a_thing()->get;DESCRIPTION
This module provides syntax for deferring and resuming subroutines while waiting for Futures to complete. This syntax aims to make code that performs asynchronous operations using futures look neater and more expressive than simply using then chaining and other techniques on the futures themselves. It is also a similar syntax used by a number of other languages; notably C# 5, EcmaScript 6, Python 3, Dart. Rust is considering adding it.
The new syntax takes the form of two new keywords, async and await.
async
The async keyword should appear just before the sub keyword that declares a new function. When present, this marks that the function performs its work in a potentially asynchronous fashion. This has two effects: it permits the body of the function to use the await expression, and it wraps the return value of the function in a Future instance.
async sub myfunc
{
return 123;
}
my $f = myfunc();
my $result = $f->get;This async-declared function always returns a Future instance when invoked. The returned future instance will eventually complete when the function returns, either by the return keyword or by falling off the end; the result of the future will be the return value from the function's code. Alternatively, if the function body throws an exception, this will cause the returned future to fail.
If the final expression in the body of the function returns a Future, don't forget to await it rather than simply returning it as it is, or else this return value will become double-wrapped - almost certainly not what you wanted.
async sub otherfunc { ... }
async sub myfunc
{
...
return await otherfunc();
}await
The await keyword forms an expression which takes a Future instance as an operand and yields the eventual result of it. Superficially it can be thought of similar to invoking the get method on the future.
my $result = await $f;
my $result = $f->get;However, the key difference (and indeed the entire reason for being a new syntax keyword) is the behaviour when the future is still pending and is not yet complete. Whereas the simple get method would block until the future is complete, the await keyword causes its entire containing function to become suspended, making it return a new (pending) future instance. It waits in this state until the future it was waiting on completes, at which point it wakes up and resumes execution from the point of the await expression. When the now-resumed function eventually finishes (either by returning a value or throwing an exception), this value is set as the result of the future it had returned earlier.
Because the await keyword may cause its containing function to suspend early, returning a pending future instance, it is only allowed inside async-marked subs.
The converse is not true; just because a function is marked as async does not require it to make use of the await expression. It is still useful to turn the result of that function into a future, entirely without awaiting on any itself.
Any function that doesn't actually await anything, and just returns immediate futures can be neatened by this module too.
Instead of writing
sub imm
{
...
return Future->done( @result );
}you can now simply write
async sub imm
{
...
return @result;
}with the added side-benefit that any exceptions thrown by the elided code will be turned into an immediate-failed Future rather than making the call itself propagate the exception, which is usually what you wanted when dealing with futures.
STABILITY WARNING
This module is still relatively new and under active development. While it now seems relatively stable enough for most use-cases, there may still be a number of memory leaks left in it, especially if still-pending futures are abandoned.
While it seems stable enough for small-scale development and experimental testing, take care when using this module in production, as some growth in memory over time may be observed. Careful use of monitoring and periodic restarts of long-running processes may be a wise precaution.
That said, using this module in places like unit-tests and short-term scripts does appear to be quite stable, so do try experimenting with it in this sort of situation, and let me know what does and doesn't work.
SUPPORTED USES
Most cases involving awaiting on still-pending futures should work fine:
async sub foo
{
my ( $f ) = @_;
BEFORE();
await $f;
AFTER();
}
async sub bar
{
my ( $f ) = @_;
return 1 + await( $f ) + 3;
}
async sub splot
{
while( COND ) {
await func();
}
}
async sub wibble
{
if( COND ) {
await func();
}
}
async sub wobble
{
foreach my $var ( THINGs ) {
await func();
}
}
async sub quux
{
my $x = do {
await func();
};
}
async sub splat
{
eval {
await func();
};
}Plain lexical variables are preserved across an await deferral:
async sub quux
{
my $message = "Hello, world\n";
await func();
print $message;
}Cancellation
Cancelled futures cause a suspended async sub to simply stop running.
async sub fizz
{
await func();
say "This is never reached";
}
my $f = fizz();
$f->cancel;Cancellation requests can propagate backwards into the future the async sub is currently waiting on.
async sub floof
{
...
await $f1;
}
my $f2 = floof();
$f2->cancel; # $f1 will be cancelled tooThis behaviour is still more experimental than the rest of the logic. The following should be noted:
There is currently no way to perform the equivalent of "on_cancel" in Future to add a cancellation callback to a future chain.
Cancellation propagation is only implemented on Perl version 5.24 and above. An
async subin an earlier perl version will still stop executing if cancelled, but will not propagate the request backwards into the future that theasync subis currently waiting on. See "TODO".
WITH OTHER MODULES
Syntax::Keyword::Try
As of Future::AsyncAwait version 0.10 and Syntax::Keyword::Try version 0.07, cross-module integration tests assert that basic try/catch blocks inside an async sub work correctly, including those that attempt to return from inside try.
use Future::AsyncAwait;
use Syntax::Keyword::Try;
async sub attempt
{
try {
await func();
return "success";
}
catch {
return "failed";
}
}SEE ALSO
"Awaiting The Future" - TPC in Amsterdam 2017
TODO
Suspend and resume with some consideration for the savestack; i.e. the area used to implement
localand similar. While in generallocalsupport has awkward questions about semantics, there are certain situations and cases where internally-implied localisation of variables would still be useful and can be supported without the semantic ambiguities of genericlocal.our $DEBUG = 0; async sub quark { local $DEBUG = 1; await func(); }Since
foreachloops on non-lexical iterator variables (usually the$_global variable) effectively imply alocal-like behaviour, these are also disallowed.async sub splurt { foreach ( LIST ) { await ... } }Some notes on what makes the problem hard can be found at
Currently this module requires perl version 5.16 or later. Additionally, threaded builds of perl earlier than 5.22 are not supported.
Support sub signatures in recent perls.
Implement cancel back-propagation for Perl versions earlier than 5.24. Currently this does not work due to some as-yet-unknown effects that installing the back-propagation has, causing future instances to be reclaimed too early.
KNOWN BUGS
This is not a complete list of all known issues, but rather a summary of the most notable ones that currently prevent the module from working correctly in a variety of situations. For a complete list of known bugs, see the RT queue at https://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Name=Future-AsyncAwait.
awaitinsidemaporgrepblocks does not work. This is due to the difficulty of detecting the map or grep context from internal perl state at suspend time, sufficient to be able to restore it again when resuming.https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=129748
As a workaround, consider converting a
mapexpression to the equivalent form usingpushonto an accumulator array with aforeachloop:my @results = map { await func($_) } ITEMS;becomes
my @results; foreach my $item ( ITEMS ) { push @results, await func($item); }with a similar transformation for
grepexpressions.Alternatively, consider using the
fmap*family of functions from Future::Utils to provide a concurrent version of the same code, which can keep multiple items running concurrently:use Future::Utils qw( fmap ); my @results = await fmap { func( shift ) } foreach => [ ITEMS ], concurrent => 5;
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With thanks to Zefram, ilmari and others from irc.perl.org/#p5p for assisting with trickier bits of XS logic.
Thanks to genio for project management and actually reminding me to write some code.
Thanks to The Perl Foundation for sponsoring me to continue working on the implementation.
AUTHOR
Paul Evans <leonerd@leonerd.org.uk>