Message-Passing

[Sean Kelly]

On Jan 26, 2012, at 1:19 PM, Manu wrote:

> On 26 January 2012 22:07, Sean Kelly <sean at invisibleduck.org> wrote:
>  
> What I like about "receiveOnly" is that the name itself suggests that anything other than the specified type is not expected, and so some measure will probably be taken.
> 
> Again, this only makes sense to me if you already expect that the act of receiving (as a compliment to the send API, which you've already invoked and have a presumption about), was capable of receiving any/multiple things, rather than receiving what you just sent a few lines back...
> 
>  receive!T says to me "look for a message of this type and block if it's not present."
> 
> Perfect. It says that to me too. I'm lost now though, this is the behaviour of receiveOnly... are you agreeing now? :)

It's only the behavior of receiveOnly if the queue is completely empty.  If it contains any other message, receiveOnly will throw.  But from what you've said I think this is simply a difference in how we design apps.  For me, it's common to send multiple message types.  For you, it sounds like it is not.