<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 19 Aug 2017, at 07:30, Brent Royal-Gordon via swift-evolution <<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote type="cite" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class="">On Aug 18, 2017, at 12:35 PM, Chris Lattner <<a href="mailto:clattner@nondot.org" class="">clattner@nondot.org</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">(Also, I notice that a fire-and-forget message can be thought of as an `async` method returning `Never`, even though the computation *does* terminate eventually. I'm not sure how to handle that, though)<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Yeah, I think that actor methods deserve a bit of magic:<br class=""><br class="">- Their bodies should be implicitly async, so they can call async methods without blocking their current queue or have to use beginAsync.<br class="">- However, if they are void “fire and forget” messages, I think the caller side should *not* have to use await on them, since enqueuing the message will not block.<br class=""></blockquote><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">I think we need to be a little careful here—the mere fact that a message returns `Void` doesn't mean the caller shouldn't wait until it's done to continue. For instance:</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">listActor.delete(at: index)</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">// Void, so it doesn't wait</span><br style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">let count = await listActor.getCount()</span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: pre; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; float: none; display: inline !important;" class="">// But we want the count *after* the deletion!</span></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""><div class="">In fact this will just work. Because both messages happen on the actor's internal serial queue, the "get count" message will only happen after the deletion. Therefore the "delete" message can return immediately to the caller (you just need the dispatch call on the queue to be made).</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Thomas</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>