I ran into the other half of this problem: If you expect nils to signify closed channels, then you can't leverage the logically false nature of nil without excluding explicit boolean false values. Given the pleasant syntax of if-let / <! pairs, I reworked my early experiments to use if-recv which is defined as follows:
(defmacro if-recv "Reads from port, binding to name. Evaluates the then block if the read was successful. Evaluates the else block if the port was closed." ([[name port :as binding] then] `(if-recv ~binding ~then nil)) ([[name port] then else] `(let [~name (<! ~port)] (if (nil? ~name) ~else ~then)))) I've considered some alternative core.async designs, such as an additional "done" sentinel value, or a pair of quote/unquote operators (see "reduced"), but nothing seems as simple as just avoiding booleans and nils, as annoying as that is. I'd be curious to here what Rich & team considered and how they're thinking about it. However, my expectation is that the nil approach won't change, since it's pretty much good enough. On Thursday, August 15, 2013 10:44:48 PM UTC-4, Mikera wrote: > > Hi all, > > I'm experimenting with core.async. Most of it is exceptionally good, but > bit I'm finding it *very* inconvenient that nil can't be sent over > channels. In particular, you can't pipe arbitrary Clojure sequences through > channels (since sequences can contain nils). > > I see this as a pretty big design flaw given the ubiquity of sequences in > Clojure code - it appears to imply that you can't easily compose channels > with generic sequence-handling code without some pretty ugly special-case > handling. > > Am I missing something? Is this a real problem for others too? > > If it is a design flaw, can it be fixed before the API gets locked down? > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.