4 replies to this topic

[GamerNebulae]

Hello everyone!

I was wondering if I could have a computer waiting for an event to happen (in this case, the event would be monitor touch) while the program is still running and calculating, etc. How would I do this? I have read about the Parallel and Coroutine API's, but I don't understand them fully.

[Bomb Bloke]

function pullEvents()
        while true do
                event, etc1, etc2, etc3 = os.pullEvent()
                -- Do stuff with the events that get pulled.
        end
end

function doOtherStuff()
        while true do
                -- Draw calculations etc
        end
end

parallel.waitForAny(pullEvents, doOtherStuff)

Bearing in mind that no ComputerCraft function ever runs while another is running (be it on the same computer or otherwise), parallel.waitForAny() queues however many functions you pass it to run - automatically switching between them whenever they yield.

Pretty much anything that causes a function to "wait" will trigger a yield. Sleeping, for example, or just using os.pullEvent().

A handy feature is that all functions executed in this manner get their own event queues - events pulled by the other functions are only removed from their own copy of the queue. This makes it very useful for eg having turtles receive RedNet messages while moving (considering that they'd otherwise discard all events received during the movement process).

[TheOddByte]

Just gonna leave this useful link here

[GamerNebulae]

TheOddByte, on 02 June 2014 - 08:23 PM, said:

Just gonna leave this useful link here

I'm reading it and trying to understand. Maybe something for the future to understand

[TheOddByte]

GamerNebulae, on 03 June 2014 - 04:43 PM, said:

I'm reading it and trying to understand. Maybe something for the future to understand

Coroutines isn't the easiest thing to understand but with that tutorial it gets easier