4 ms·

Doesn't any program that processes interactive/network IO require an infinite loop? Are those programs not useful?

• eberkund 9y ago
  No, they can use interrupts instead.
  • avaer 9y ago
    I don't understand how that avoids looping. If your program doesn't loop waiting for interrupts, it has terminated. So it won't be getting those interrupts.
• dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Doesn't any program that processes interactive/network IO require an infinite loop? No. I mean, there are lots of common uses of unbounded loops in that domain, but any of them could be replaced with maximum-bounded loops with sufficient large bounds and be unnoticeably different in practice, mostly cutting off (largely pathological) edge cases.
  • mbrock 9y ago
    It seems that a better solution is to guarantee that each step of such an unbounded loop is bounded, and clearly distinguish these types of processes. For example, a kernel's scheduler should run indefinitely, but each scheduling step should be bounded. Ideally we would specify the scheduler loop as a non-terminating yet "productive" process.