Pausable stackful coroutines (fibers) give ability to write simple but responsive and concurrent code.
It can be used for:
- Automatic pause long task every 16 ms to ensure 60fps.
- Concurrent execution of different tasks (not serial).
- Abort incomplete task (with subtasks) as reaction on event.
- Write simple (synchronous) code.
- Improve performance because synchronous code can be better optimized by JIT.
- Call synchronous API (like Array:reduce) without loosing of concurrency.
API
// Fiber - lightweight thread, that has separate call stack.
// Multiple fibers concurrently executes in one system thread.
declare class Fiber< Result > extends Promise< Result > {
// Fiber that are executing now.
static current : Fiber< any > | null
// Freezes current fiber until promise will be resolved.
// After, resumes fiber and returns result or rethrows an exception if promise is rejected.
// Throws NotInFiberError if called outside any fiber.
static wait< Result >( promise : PromiseLike< Result > ) : Result
// Executes function in separate fiber
static run( task : ()=> Result ) : Fiber< Result >
// Abort execution.
// Do nothing if is already completed.
abort : ()=> void
}
Other Languages
- Greenlets in Python
- Goroutines in Go
- Fibers in D
- Virtual Thread in Loom in JVM
Links
- node-fibers - NodeJS native extension that adds fibers to v8 runtime.
- What Color is Your Function?
- Lightweight Threads for Concurrency
- Different async js implementations of same app
More info: JS Proposal: Fibers.md · GitHub