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Re: lynx-dev z (was Re: Timeout parameter?)


From: brian j. pardy
Subject: Re: lynx-dev z (was Re: Timeout parameter?)
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 14:38:03 -0700 (PDT)

On Fri, 21 Aug 1998, Philip Webb wrote:

> 980821 Leonid Pauzner wrote: 
> > 980820 James Elkinton wrote:
> >> 'z' does not stop 'Looking up foo.bar.com' situations ...
> >> stuck at such prompts regularly, sometimes for many minutes at a time.
> >> It would be nice if 'z' would stop those too without ctrl-c'ing out.
> > This definitely a bug,
> > which only happens when URL incomplete and 'guessing' is in effect,
> > still awaiting for volunteer, but you may restrict guessing from lynx.cfg
> 980821 Thomas Dickey wrote: 
> > Are you configuring with  --enable-nsl-fork ?
> 
> this is (yet) another regular irritant, which may have a simple fix.
> (1) why in fact does `z' not stop a look-up:
>     ie what's the big difference from a connection/download?

IIRC, gethost[by]name() (whichever lynx uses, no source in front of me) 
blocks when looking up a hostname, making it impossible to interrupt it.
That's why forking it away allows an interrupt.

> (2) how difficult would it be to add a time-out option as JE requested,
>     in  lynx.cfg  & the other usual places, esp for off-line use?

Don't know that.

> (3) why do we have to rely on a configure switch (of all things)?

I'd rather see it as an option instead of as a configure switch as well.

> (4) if we do have to rely on that, it needs better documentation.

Documentation is easy for anyone who wants to write it -- with the 
--enable-nsl-fork option at compiletime, lookups can be aborted. If not,
they cannot.

As for drawbacks of using nsl-fork, I'm not sure. If you regularly run into
too-many-process limits that could be a problem, and the small amount of
overhead involved -- probably negligible.

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