>Spot on.  It would be wonderful if someone put in all the checks for
>EINTR so that this could be enabled more often.  There's no reason for
>this primitive to be so expensive.
>
>.

But what about using PTHREAD support instead! Seems a simple choice 
for many platforms that have PTHREAD, or maybe I should ask which 
(mainstream) U**X wouldn't support it to justify the 
coding/validation of all these EINTR checks.

Also it's a gotha for plugin builders.


>Scott say:
>>  Although John's solution works, its not the ideal; it makes the checks a
>>  little cheaper, but does not remove them. This still leaves behind a
>>  noticable overhead. While, THIS:
>
>It should make them a *LOT* cheaper: it's a variable read versus a 
>system call.

On many high end cpus the variable read kinda disappears into the 
clutter as multiple logic units fiddle with the instruction stream. 
The timeofday is *way* more expensive, perhaps a million times.

-- 
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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