NAME
threadify.rb
SYNOPSIS
enumerable = %w( a b c d )
enumerable.threadify(2){ 'process this block using two worker threads' }
DESCRIPTION
threadify.rb makes it stupid easy to process a bunch of data using 'n'
worker threads
INSTALL
gem install threadify
URI
http://rubyforge.org/projects/codeforpeople
SAMPLES
<========< sample/a.rb >========>
~ > cat sample/a.rb
require 'open-uri'
require 'yaml'
require 'rubygems'
require 'threadify'
uris =
%w(
http://google.com
http://yahoo.com
http://rubyforge.org
http://ruby-lang.org
http://kcrw.org
http://drawohara.com
http://codeforpeople.com
)
time 'without threadify' do
uris.each do |uri|
body = open(uri){|pipe| pipe.read}
end
end
time 'with threadify' do
uris.threadify do |uri|
body = open(uri){|pipe| pipe.read}
end
end
BEGIN {
def time label
a = Time.now.to_f
yield
ensure
b = Time.now.to_f
y label => (b - a)
end
}
~ > ruby sample/a.rb
···
---
without threadify: 3.75206303596497
---
with threadify: 1.37899804115295
<========< sample/b.rb >========>
~ > cat sample/b.rb
require 'yaml'
require 'rubygems'
require 'threadify'
size = Integer(ARGV.shift || (2 ** 15))
haystack = Array.new(size){|i| i}
needle = 2 * (size / 3)
a, b = 4, 2
time 'without threadify' do
a = haystack.each{|value| break value if value == needle}
end
time 'with threadify' do
b = haystack.threadify(16){|value| threadify! value if value == needle}
end
raise if a != b
y :a => a, :b => b, :needle => needle
BEGIN {
def time label
a = Time.now.to_f
yield
ensure
b = Time.now.to_f
y label => (b - a)
end
}
~ > ruby sample/b.rb
---
without threadify: 0.00630998611450195
---
with threadify: 0.270262956619263
---
:needle: 21844
:a: 21844
:b: 21844
HISTORY
0.0.3
- added ability to short-circuit the parallel processing, a.k.a to 'break'
from threadify
0.0.2
- don't use thread.exit, just let the thread die naturally
- add version to Threadify module
- comments 
a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
--
we can deny everything, except that we have the possibility of being better. simply reflect on that.
h.h. the 14th dalai lama