In Go, why does "File.Readdirnames" make a "clock_gettime" system call? - linux

As a follow up to this question, I am trying to write a Go program that only lists a files name in an efficient matter without unnecessary system calls. This is what I have thus far:
package main
import (
"os"
"fmt"
"log"
)
func main() {
// Open directory and check for errors
f, err := os.Open(".")
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
// Get file names
files, err := f.Readdirnames(0)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
// Print files
fmt.Print(files, "\n")
}
However, when I run an strace, I see many of the following:
clock_gettime(CLOCK_REALTIME, {1406822401, 824793686}) = 0
What does that pertain to? How can I make this code more efficient?

I am spitballing, but I would think that it is related to Go's built-in scheduler and garbage collection.
Short answer is, go will never be quite as fast as C because it provides all of that extra runtime functionality which C doesn't.
The code you listed is probably the fastest way to do what you want in Go.

clock_gettime is just a system call,which is called in go's runtime. runtime do a lot of things, schedual, and so on, so it's normal for so many clock_gettime.
I don't think you can make this program more efficient, 'cause it is just for so tiny function .You shouldn't mind it.

Related

How to import platform-specific struct?

I've got a struct in a file that begins with this line:
// +build windows
Therefore it will only be built on Windows. However, the part of the application that initializes everything needs to check if it is running on Windows and if so, create an instance of the struct. I have no idea how to do this without breaking things on other platforms.
For example, if the file contains a function newWindowsSpecificThing() and I compile on Linux, the function won't exist because it is defined in a file that isn't being compiled. (And, of course, this will produce an error.)
How do I work around this dilemma?
I think your solution would be to have some method on your struct which is used on all platforms. Look at how the dir_*.go files work for the os package. The func (file *File) readdirnames(n int) (names []string, err error) is available on all platforms by providing it in dir_plan9.go, dir_unix.go and dir_windows.go.
For your problem, I'd take the same approach but with some generic method that does internal work. In your application logic you'd call that function and in your file_unix.go file you'd define that function to do nothing (empty body).
Somewhere you clearly have a function that calls newWindowsSpecificThing(). That should be in a Windows-specific file. If it were, then it wouldn't matter that it isn't available. The fact that you have something "check if it is running on Windows" suggests a if runtime.GOOS == "windows" statement somewhere. Rather than have that, move the entire if into a function that is defined in a Windows-specific file. You'll also need to define that function in a !windows file, which is fine.
As an example from my code, I have a function:
func Setup() *config {
var cfg *config
// setup portable parts of cfg
return PlatformSpecificSetup(cfg)
}
I then have a file marked // +build windows that defines PlatformSpecificSetup() one way, and another marked // +build !windows that defines it another. I never have to check runtime.GOOS and I never have to deal with undefined data types. The config struct itself is defined in those files, so it can have different fields for each platform (as long as they agree enough for Setup()). If I were being more careful, I could create a struct like:
type config struct {
// independent stuff
plat *platformConfig
}
And then just define platformConfig in each platform file, but in practice I've found that more trouble than it's worth.

killall(1) equivalent system call or C library call

I have to stop the earlier instances of processes before starting a new instance. For this i need to system call or a C library call.
Presently i use "system("killall name"). This works but I want to replace this with any equivalent system(2)/library(3) calls. What is the option?
Also to remove files from directory as in "system("rm -f /opt/files*")",
what would be the alternate library(3)/system(2) call?
Pleas note * in file names, remove all files with one call.
regards,
AK
As far as I know there is no general way to do it, as there is no general way to get the pid by its process name.
You have to collect the pids of related processes and call the int kill(pid_t pid, int signo); function
At least you can try to check how its implemented by killall itself
A small addition from Ben's link, killall invokes following lines, i.e. collecting the pids of related process by find_pid_by_name function, implementation of which can be found here
pidList = find_pid_by_name(arg);
if (*pidList == 0) {
errors++;
if (!quiet)
bb_error_msg("%s: no process killed", arg);
} else {
pid_t *pl;
for (pl = pidList; *pl; pl++) {
if (*pl == pid)
continue;
if (kill(*pl, signo) == 0)
continue;
errors++;
if (!quiet)
bb_perror_msg("can't kill pid %d", (int)*pl);
}
}
You can see the implementation in busybox here: http://git.busybox.net/busybox/tree/procps/kill.c
You can also link with busybox as a shared library and invoke its kill_main instead of launching a separate process. It looks fairly well behaved for embedding like this -- always returns normally, never calls exit() -- although you may have difficultly getting error information beyond the return code. (But you aren't getting that via system() either).

golang bufio in object

I'm fairly new to Golang; previously used Python.
I am having difficult time to apply bufio in the object.
type fout struct {
filename string
fo File
bfo Writer
}
func (a *fout) init() {
a.fo,_:=os.Open(a.filename)
a.bfo:=bufio.NewWriter(fo)
}
Basically, I like to create objects; each will have it's filename, and bufio will be used.
Can anyone help me please?
Thank you
Few things in the code sample:
Every use of a name from another package needs to be prefixed with the package name--so fo File has to be fo *os.File.
You normally declare *bufio.Writer and *os.File as pointers (see the bufio and file docs at http://golang.org/pkg)
You want plain =, not :=, for assigning to attributes like a.fo and a.bfo.
Don't throw away errors, particularly if you're used to exceptions, or you'll have impossible-to-debug problems. (For a trivial script for learning you can if err != nil { panic(err) }, but for real use, you almost always want to return them.)
It could also help to review the tour, pick up some tricks/advice from the various talks and blog posts, maybe walk through Go By Example (I admit I haven't persionally used it but sounds like it could be useful when getting started), look at some open-source Go code (projects on Github, the stdlib, anything), and run through the surprisingly readable spec once you're at the level where you want to know how the language really works.

Setting process name (as seen by `ps`) in Go

The following (rightfully) doesn't work:
package main
import (
"os"
"time"
)
func main() {
os.Args[0] = "custom name"
println("sleeping")
time.Sleep(1000 * time.Second)
println("done")
}
Some languages provide this feature of setting process name as a built-in functionality (in Ruby, for instance, it is only a matter of assigning to $0) or as a third-party library (Python).
I'm looking for a solution that works, at least, on Linux.
There are multiple ways to accomplish this, and many of them only work in certain situations. I don't really recommend doing it, as (for one thing) it can result in your process showing up with different names in different situations. They require using syscall and/or unsafe, and so you're deliberately subverting the safety of the Go language. That said, however, your options seem to be:
Modify argv[0]
func SetProcessName(name string) error {
argv0str := (*reflect.StringHeader)(unsafe.Pointer(&os.Args[0]))
argv0 := (*[1 << 30]byte)(unsafe.Pointer(argv0str.Data))[:argv0str.Len]
n := copy(argv0, name)
if n < len(argv0) {
argv0[n] = 0
}
return nil
}
In Go, you don't have access to the actual argv array itself (without calling internal runtime functions), so you are limited to a new name no longer than the length of the current process name.
This seems to mostly work on both Darwin and Linux.
Call PR_SET_NAME
func SetProcessName(name string) error {
bytes := append([]byte(name), 0)
ptr := unsafe.Pointer(&bytes[0])
if _, _, errno := syscall.RawSyscall6(syscall.SYS_PRCTL, syscall.PR_SET_NAME, uintptr(ptr), 0, 0, 0, 0); errno != 0 {
return syscall.Errno(errno)
}
return nil
}
The new name can be at most 16 bytes.
This doesn't work on Darwin, and doesn't seem to do much on Linux, though it succeeds and PR_GET_NAME reports the correct name afterward. This may be something peculiar about my Linux VM, though.
To change a process name on Linux, you need to use the prctl system call combined with the PR_SET_NAME option.
At the moment, I don't think you can do this in Go code. You can, however, build a small C module to do this and then integrate it into your Go build.
I don't think that "process title" is a well defined term. Anyway, what has Ruby to do with Go? The documentation for os.Args doesn't mention any "process title", nor it says any magic will happen on assigning to a slice item. The later is actually a general property of Go. There's no magic getters/setters for struct fields, variables of array/slice items, so a simple assignment simply assigns and does nothing more and cannot do anything more.
In short, the lack of magic is the expected, correct behavior.
For fiddling with process properties other than the portably accessible ones via the 'os' package, one has to use package 'syscall' in a platform specific way. But then the build constraints (discussed here) can help to correctly handle stuff across platforms.

Separating Logic/GUI and user interaction

imagine you have a function that creates/copies/moves files. [logic]
For the case that a file that should be copied/created already exists you would like to ask the user to overwrite the file or not.[(G)UI]
What is your approach to implement this if (G)UI and logic are completely separated?
The first thing that comes into my mind would be the MVC-pattern, but this means that I would have to use it whereever I need user interaction.
Any other suggestions?
BTW: How would you implement this in non-OO-languages?
If GUI and logic are really separated, then this question should never arise. The program should, by design, either overwrite or not overwrite based on an option which has a default value. If the GUI is available, the option can be set.
In fact, although the obvious approach is to just have at it and begin copying, you could make a first pass looking for conflicts, and checking that the target device has enough free storage. Then, if there is a problem, terminate by doing nothing, unless there is a GUI in which case you can report the problem and ask whether to proceed anyway.
If you want to have a design in which the GUI can be invoked on a file by file basis, then design the logic around that as a set of n processes each of which copies one file, and has an optional GUI available in the error reporting section. The GUI can then reinvoke the copy-one-file logic.
I can see two ways:
You have two functions, file_exists(...) and copy_file(...). The UI side always calls file_exists first and asks the user whether to copy the file is it already exists.
You have only one function copy_file(bool force, ...), that by default fails if the file exists. So UI side calls the default version of the function, check if it failed and why, if it was because the file already exists, ask the user and try again with force=true.
In a Non OO language I would implement some kind of event queue where the parent (or child, depending on your design) UI polled for events while a 'busy' flag was true. Such an event lets the other side do other work while waiting for a 'they answered' flag to come true. Of course, some timeout in both directions would have to be observed as well as mutual exclusion. Basically, imply the principles of non-blocking I/O or your favorite theory on practical lock free programming here.
There are degrees of separation .. processes can communicate. Depending on your language of choice, you have shared memory segments, semaphores .. or IPC via relational DB with primitive signals. Its hard to be more specific with such a generic question.
See my comment, a little more information is needed so an answer can be crafted that works within your language of choice.
The first thing that comes into my mind would be the MVC-pattern, but this means that I would have to use it wherever I need user interaction.
And this is a bad thing why? Separating GUI and logic is exactly what the MVC pattern is for. Don't be scared of it just because it a has a long name -- as soon as you've separated GUI and logic you have a "view" and a "controller", at least, if not a "model" -- and if your application has state, you've got a model too. You just may not have admitted it to yourself yet.
From what I can see, there are really two problems:
We have an algorithm (logic) in which we would like to defer some operations and decisions to something else (e.g. user via UI).
We would like to avoid tight coupling between the algorithm and that something else.
If we use OO languages, there are several design patters which address these two specific problems.
Template Method pattern can solve #1. It does not solve #2 very well because the typical implementation is via inheritence.
Observer pattern looks promising too.
So really it is choosing and mixing the simplest one for the needs and most suitable for the language.
In practical terms, if talk about C# for example, we can implement Template Method and Observer hybrid like this:
// This will handle extensions to the FileCopy algorithm
abstract class FileCopyExtention
{
public abstract Response WhatToDoWhenFileExists();
}
// the copy function, pure logic
public static void Copy(string source, string destination, FileCopyExtention extension)
{
if (File.Exists(destination))
{
var response = _extension.WhatToDoWhenFileExists();
if (response == overwrite)
// overwrite the file
else
// error
}
}
// This is our user-interactive UI extension
class FileCopyUI : FileCopyExtention
{
public override Response WhatToDoWhenFileExists()
{
// show some UI, return user's response to the caller
}
}
// the program itself
void Main()
{
Copy("/tmp/foo", "/tmp/bar", new FileCopyUI());
}
As a variation of the theme, you can use events, delegates or whatever the language of your choice provides.
In C, this could be a function pointer, in C++ a reference to a class I guess.
What about this approach [pseudo-code]:
UIClass
{
//
// Some code
//
bool fileCopied = false;
do {
try {
fileCopied = CopyFile(fileName);
} catch (FileExists) {
//
// Ask "File exists! Overwrite?" If "No", exit do-loop
//
} catch (FileLocked) {
//
// Ask "File Locked! Repeat?", If "No", exit do-loop
//
} catch (etc...) {
//
// etc.
//
}
} while (!fileCopied);
//
// Some code
//
}
LogicClass
{
//
// Some code
//
bool CopyFile(string fileName)
{
//
// copy file
//
}
//
// Some code
//
}

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