Re: What's the difference between a "coroutine" and a "thread" in Lua?

[Stefan Sandberg <keffo.sandberg@...>]

"thread" just means exactly that, it's one coherent line of execution, 
it doesn't state if it's preemptive or collaborative.. It's like trying 
to differentiate between an apple and a melon by calling both of them 
fruit, and calling an apple a "fruit-apple".  Hm,, that might have come 
out a bit fuzzy, but so is this whole discussion.. :)

I agree with Asko's point (a million emails ago) that Lua should only 
mention coroutines, since that is what is implemented, nothing more, 
nothing less. Throwing in "thread" in the same mix just makes things 
confusing, lord knows I've pondered over that a few times when I was 
hanging out with the cool kids at the Lua-kindergarten.


"Real" preemptive threading is something that should be incorporated 
deeper in the lua core though, as well as someone giving Mike Pall a 
64bit cpu!,  since both of those are utterly vital in the very near 
future...


Asko Kauppi wrote:
> I don't think using that name in Lua would be much better than the 
> current "threads". OS fibers can maybe be used with Lua coroutines, 
> and again we'd be in terminology loose ground. Maybe "Lua threads" is 
> okay, but the name of the type itself is still misleading enough. The 
> rest is documentation "only". :)
>
> -asko
>
>
> Tony Finch kirjoitti 13.8.2007 kello 19:53:
>
> > On Fri, 10 Aug 2007, Gregg Reynolds wrote:
> > > Ah, the Joy of Lex.  Some other possibilities:
> >
> > Microsoft calls coroutines "fibres".
> >
> > Tony.
> > --
> > f.a.n.finch  <dot@dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/
> > IRISH SEA: SOUTHERLY, BACKING NORTHEASTERLY FOR A TIME, 3 OR 4. 
> > SLIGHT OR
> > MODERATE. SHOWERS. MODERATE OR GOOD, OCCASIONALLY POOR.