From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-04-11 12:30:48
Frank Mori Hess:
> Would support for releasing a future's reference count be acceptable in
> this
> scheme? That is, something like
>
> future<void> fire();
> //...
> {
> future<void> forget = fire();
> forget.release(); // promise is not cancelled when forget destructs
> }
Good point about fire and forget tasks. I'm not sure I have a satisfactory
answer yet. There is no way to distinguish a result-only task from a
perform-side-effects task automatically, so the user must have some way to
say which is which.
On the other hand, a newly created promise doesn't have a cancel handler by
default, so whoever installs the cancel handler (the executor) can easily
take an argument that disables said installation.