Common Lisp中的并发编程

Rob Pike谈到了Go语言中的并发编程，其主旨是在分开的轻量级进程中启动并发的任务，任务通过channel通信来同步。Common Lisp中的ChanL库提供了类似的功能，尽管我不知道其线程如何轻量，但其接口是相似的。

使用channel简单有效的例子是并行执行一些IO相关的任务，比如取多个网页。开始前，先定义一个计时的宏：

(defmacro time-it (&body body)
    (let ((start-time (gensym)))
      `(let ((,start-time (get-internal-real-time)))
          ,@body
         (format t "Runtime: ~a milliseconds.~%" (- (get-internal-real-time) ,start-time)))))

接着使用QuickLisp装入ChanL与Drakma(用于简单的HTTP requests)：
(ql:quickload "drakma")
(ql:quickload "chanl")

URLs例子：
(defparameter *urls*
    (list
        "http://blog.thezerobit.com/"
        "http://quicklisp.org/"
        "http://www.cliki.net/index"
        "http://sbcl.org/"))

一个执行简单HTTP request的函数：
(defun do-request (url)
    (let ((start-time (get-internal-real-time)))
        (format t "Starting request: ~a~%" url)
        (drakma:http-request url)
        (let ((elapsed (- (get-internal-real-time) start-time)))
            (format t "Completed request in ~a ms: ~a~%" elapsed url))))

没有使用并发的做法：
(time-it (dolist (url *urls*) (do-request url)))

;; Starting request: http://blog.thezerobit.com/
;; Completed request in 616 ms: http://blog.thezerobit.com/
;; Starting request: http://quicklisp.org/
;; Completed request in 819 ms: http://quicklisp.org/
;; Starting request: http://www.cliki.net/index
;; Completed request in 429 ms: http://www.cliki.net/index
;; Starting request: http://sbcl.org/
;; Completed request in 291 ms: http://sbcl.org/
;; Runtime: 2155 milliseconds.

以串行的方式完成所有requests要超过2秒。

(defun do-request-chan (url chan)
    (let ((start-time (get-internal-real-time)))
        (chanl:send chan (formatnil "Starting request: ~a~%" url))
        (drakma:http-request url)
        (let ((elapsed (- (get-internal-real-time) start-time)))
           (chanl:sendchan
                (format nil "Completed request in ~a ms: ~a~%" elapsed url)))))

对于每个HTTP request，我们调用pexec启动分开的进程，然后等待8条消息进入为同步而创建的channel。

(time-it
    (let ((chan (make-instance'chanl:channel)))
        (dolist (url *urls*)
            (chanl:pexec () (do-request-chan url chan)))
        (dotimes (x 8)
           (format t (chanl:recv chan)))))

;; Starting request: http://blog.thezerobit.com/
;; Starting request: http://quicklisp.org/
;; Starting request: http://sbcl.org/
;; Starting request: http://www.cliki.net/index
;; Completed request in 291 ms: http://blog.thezerobit.com/
;; Completed request in 302 ms: http://www.cliki.net/index
;; Completed request in 306 ms: http://sbcl.org/
;; Completed request in 703 ms: http://quicklisp.org/
;; Runtime: 703 milliseconds.

整个操作仅花费了那个最长request的时间，创建线程的开销与并发节约的时间相比可以忽略。注意，缺省情况下channels不缓存，因此send将阻塞到有其它线程调用recv为止。ChanL也提供了带缓存的channels和其它一些goodies，有兴趣的可以自己研究。