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- <meta name="created" content="Mon Nov 12 08:58:02 2007" />
+ <meta name="created" content="Mon Nov 12 09:11:56 2007" />
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<li><a href="#WATCHER_TYPES">WATCHER TYPES</a>
<ul><li><a href="#struct_ev_io_is_my_file_descriptor_r">struct ev_io - is my file descriptor readable or writable</a></li>
<li><a href="#struct_ev_timer_relative_and_optiona">struct ev_timer - relative and optionally recurring timeouts</a></li>
-<li><a href="#ev_periodic">ev_periodic</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ev_periodic_to_cron_or_not_to_cron_i">ev_periodic - to cron or not to cron it</a></li>
<li><a href="#ev_signal_signal_me_when_a_signal_ge">ev_signal - signal me when a signal gets signalled</a></li>
<li><a href="#ev_child_wait_for_pid_status_changes">ev_child - wait for pid status changes</a></li>
<li><a href="#ev_idle_when_you_ve_got_nothing_bett">ev_idle - when you've got nothing better to do</a></li>
<div id="DESCRIPTION_CONTENT">
<p>Libev is an event loop: you register interest in certain events (such as a
file descriptor being readable or a timeout occuring), and it will manage
-these event sources and provide your program events.</p>
+these event sources and provide your program with events.</p>
<p>To do this, it must take more or less complete control over your process
(or thread) by executing the <i>event loop</i> handler, and will then
communicate events via a callback mechanism.</p>
kqueue mechanisms for file descriptor events, relative timers, absolute
timers with customised rescheduling, signal events, process status change
events (related to SIGCHLD), and event watchers dealing with the event
-loop mechanism itself (idle, prepare and check watchers).</p>
+loop mechanism itself (idle, prepare and check watchers). It also is quite
+fast (see a <b>http://libev.schmorp.de/bench.html</b> (<cite>benchmark</cite>) comparing it
+to libevent).</p>
</div>
<h1 id="CONVENTIONS">CONVENTIONS</h1><p><a href="#TOP" class="toplink">Top</a></p>
</div>
<h1 id="TIME_AND_OTHER_GLOBAL_FUNCTIONS">TIME AND OTHER GLOBAL FUNCTIONS</h1><p><a href="#TOP" class="toplink">Top</a></p>
<div id="TIME_AND_OTHER_GLOBAL_FUNCTIONS_CONT">
-<p>Libev represents time as a single floating point number. This type is
+<p>Libev represents time as a single floating point number, representing the
+(fractional) number of seconds since the (POSIX) epoch (somewhere near
+the beginning of 1970, details are complicated, don't ask). This type is
called <code>ev_tstamp</code>, which is what you should use too. It usually aliases
to the double type in C.</p>
<dl>
<p>As long as your watcher is active (has been started but not stopped) you
must not touch the values stored in it. Most specifically you must never
reinitialise it or call its set method.</p>
-<p>You cna check wether an event is active by calling the <code>ev_is_active
-(watcher *)</code> macro. To see wether an event is outstanding (but the
+<p>You cna check whether an event is active by calling the <code>ev_is_active
+(watcher *)</code> macro. To see whether an event is outstanding (but the
callback for it has not been called yet) you cna use the <code>ev_is_pending
(watcher *)</code> macro.</p>
<p>Each and every callback receives the event loop pointer as first, the
</div>
<h2 id="struct_ev_io_is_my_file_descriptor_r">struct ev_io - is my file descriptor readable or writable</h2>
<div id="struct_ev_io_is_my_file_descriptor_r-2">
-<p>I/O watchers check wether a file descriptor is readable or writable
+<p>I/O watchers check whether a file descriptor is readable or writable
in each iteration of the event loop (This behaviour is called
level-triggering because you keep receiving events as long as the
condition persists. Remember you cna stop the watcher if you don't want to
</dl>
</div>
-<h2 id="ev_periodic">ev_periodic</h2>
-<div id="ev_periodic_CONTENT">
+<h2 id="ev_periodic_to_cron_or_not_to_cron_i">ev_periodic - to cron or not to cron it</h2>
+<div id="ev_periodic_to_cron_or_not_to_cron_i-2">
<p>Periodic watchers are also timers of a kind, but they are very versatile
(and unfortunately a bit complex).</p>
<p>Unlike ev_timer's, they are not based on real time (or relative time)
projects / software / libev.git / blobdiff