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Promises

8.7. Promises#

So far we have only considered sequential programs. Execution of a sequential program proceeds one step at a time, with no choice about which step to take next. Sequential programs are limited in that they are not very good at dealing with multiple sources of simultaneous input, and they can only execute on a single processor. Many modern applications are instead concurrent.

8.7.1. Concurrency#

Concurrent programs enable computations to overlap in duration, instead of being forced to happen sequentially.

  • Graphical user interfaces (GUIs), for example, rely on concurrency to keep the interface responsive while computation continues in the background. Without concurrency, a GUI would “lock up” until the current action is completed. Sometimes, because of concurrency bugs, that happens anyway—and it’s frustrating for the user!

  • A spreadsheet needs concurrency to re-compute all the cells while still keeping the menus and editing capabilities available for the user.

  • A web browser needs concurrency to read and render web pages incrementally as new data comes in over the network, to run JavaScript programs embedded in the web page, and to enable the user to navigate through the page and click on hyperlinks.

Servers are another example of applications that need concurrency. A web server needs to respond to many requests from clients, and clients would prefer not to wait. If an assignment is released in CMS, for example, you would prefer to be able to view that assignment at the same time as everyone else in the class, rather than having to “take a number” and wait for your number to be called—as at the Department of Motor Vehicles, or at an old-fashioned deli, etc.

One of the primary jobs of an operating system (OS) is to provide concurrency. The OS makes it possible for many applications to be executing concurrently: a music player, a web browser, a code editor, etc. How does it do that? There are two fundamental, complementary approaches:

  • Interleaving: rapidly switch back and forth between computations. For example, execute the music player for 100 milliseconds, then the browser, then the editor, then repeat. That makes it appear as though multiple computations are occurring simultaneously, but in reality, only one is ever occurring at the same time.

  • Parallelism: use hardware that is capable of performing two or more computations literally at the same time. Many processors these days are multicore, meaning that they have multiple central processing units (CPUs), each of which can be executing a program simultaneously.

Regardless of the approaches being used, concurrent programming is challenging. Even if there are multiple cores available for simultaneous use, there are still many other resources that must be shared: memory, the screen, the network interface, etc. Managing that sharing, especially without introducing bugs, is quite difficult. For example, if two programs want to communicate by using the computer’s memory, there needs to be some agreement on when each program is allowed to read and write from the memory. Otherwise, for example, both programs might attempt to write to the same location in memory, leading to corrupted data. Those kinds of race conditions, where a program races to complete its operations before another program, are notoriously difficult to avoid.

The most fundamental challenge is that concurrency makes the execution of a program become nondeterministic: the order in which operations occur cannot necessarily be known ahead of time. Race conditions are an example of nondeterminism. To program correctly in the face of nondeterminism, the programmer is forced to think about all possible orders in which operations might execute, and ensure that in all of them the program works correctly.

Purely functional programs make nondeterminism easier to reason about, because evaluation of an expression always returns the same value no matter what. For example, in the expression (2 * 4) + (3 * 5), the operations can be executed concurrently (e.g., with the left and right products evaluated simultaneously) without changing the answer. Imperative programming is more problematic. For example, the expressions !x and incr x; !x, if executed concurrently, could give different results depending on which executes first.

8.7.2. Threads#

To make concurrent programming easier, computer scientists have invented many abstractions. One of the best known is threads. Abstractly, a thread is a single sequential computation. There can be many threads running at a time, either interleaved or in parallel depending on the hardware, and a scheduler handles choosing which threads are running at any given time. Scheduling can either be preemptive, meaning that the scheduler is permitted to stop a thread and restart it later without the thread getting a choice in the matter, or cooperative, meaning that the thread must choose to relinquish control back to the scheduler. The former can lead to race conditions, and the latter can lead to unresponsive applications.

Concretely, a thread is a set of values that are loaded into the registers of a processor. Those values tell the processor where to find the next instruction to execute, where its stack and heap are located in memory, etc. To implement preemption, a scheduler sets a timer in the hardware; when the timer goes off, the current thread is interrupted and the scheduler gets to run. CS 3410 and 4410 cover those concepts in detail.

8.7.3. Promises#

In the functional programming paradigm, one of the best known abstractions for concurrency is promises. Other names for this idea include futures, deferreds, and delayeds. All those names refer to the idea of a computation that is not yet finished: it has promised to eventually produce a value in the future, but the completion of the computation has been deferred or delayed. There may be many such values being computed concurrently, and when the value is finally available, there may be computations ready to execute that depend on the value.

This idea has been widely adopted in many languages and libraries, including Java, JavaScript, and .NET. Indeed, modern JavaScript adds an async keyword that causes a function to return a promise, and an await keyword that waits for a promise to finish computing. There are two widely-used libraries in OCaml that implement promises: Async and Lwt. Async is developed by Jane Street. Lwt is part of the Ocsigen project, which is a web framework for OCaml.

We now take a deeper look at promises in Lwt. The name of the library was an acronym for “light-weight threads.” But that was a misnomer, as the GitHub page admits (as of 10/22/18):

Much of the current manual refers to … “lightweight threads” or just “threads.” This will be fixed in the new manual. [Lwt implements] promises, and has nothing to do with system or preemptive threads.

So don’t think of Lwt as having anything to do with threads: it really is a library for promises.

In Lwt, a promise is a reference: a value that is permitted to mutate at most once. When created, it is like an empty box that contains nothing. We say that the promise is pending. Eventually the promise can be fulfilled, which is like putting something inside the box. Instead of being fulfilled, the promise can instead be rejected, in which case the box is filled with an exception. In either case, fulfilled or rejected, we say that the promise is resolved. Regardless of whether the promise is resolved or rejected, once the box is filled, its contents may never change.

For now, we will mostly forget about concurrency. Later we’ll come back and incorporate it. But there is one part of the design for concurrency that we need to address now. When we later start using functions for OS-provided concurrency, such as concurrent reads and writes from files, there will need to be a division of responsibilities:

  • The client code that wants to make use of concurrency will need to access promises: query whether they are resolved or pending, and make use of the resolved values.

  • The library and OS code that implements concurrency will need to mutate the promise—that is, to actually fulfill or reject it. Client code does not need that ability.

We therefore will introduce one additional abstraction called a resolver. There will be a one-to-one association between promises and resolvers. The resolver for a promise will be used internally by the concurrency library but not revealed to clients. The clients will only get access to the promise.

For example, suppose the concurrency library supported an operation to concurrently read a string from the network. The library would implement that operation as follows:

  • Create a new promise and its associated resolver. The promise is pending.

  • Call an OS function that will concurrently read the string then invoke the resolver on that string.

  • Return the promise (but not resolver) to the client. The OS meanwhile continues to work on reading the string.

You might think of the resolver as being a “private and writeable” value used primarily by the library and the promise as being a “public and read-only” value used primarily by the client.

8.7.4. Making Our Own Promises#

Here is an interface for our own Lwt-style promises. The names have been changed to make the interface clearer.

(** A signature for Lwt-style promises, with better names. *)
module type PROMISE = sig
  type 'a state =
    | Pending
    | Fulfilled of 'a
    | Rejected of exn

  type 'a promise

  type 'a resolver

  (** [make ()] is a new promise and resolver. The promise is pending. *)
  val make : unit -> 'a promise * 'a resolver

  (** [return x] is a new promise that is already fulfilled with value
      [x]. *)
  val return : 'a -> 'a promise

  (** [state p] is the state of the promise. *)
  val state : 'a promise -> 'a state

  (** [fulfill r x] fulfills the promise [p] associated with [r] with
      value [x], meaning that [state p] will become [Fulfilled x].
      Requires: [p] is pending. *)
  val fulfill : 'a resolver -> 'a -> unit

  (** [reject r x] rejects the promise [p] associated with [r] with
      exception [x], meaning that [state p] will become [Rejected x].
      Requires: [p] is pending. *)
  val reject : 'a resolver -> exn -> unit
end

module type PROMISE =
  sig
    type 'a state = Pending | Fulfilled of 'a | Rejected of exn
    type 'a promise
    type 'a resolver
    val make : unit -> 'a promise * 'a resolver
    val return : 'a -> 'a promise
    val state : 'a promise -> 'a state
    val fulfill : 'a resolver -> 'a -> unit
    val reject : 'a resolver -> exn -> unit
  end

To implement that interface, we can make the representation type of 'a promise be a reference to a state:

type 'a state = Pending | Fulfilled of 'a | Rejected of exn
type 'a promise = 'a state ref

type 'a state = Pending | Fulfilled of 'a | Rejected of exn

type 'a promise = 'a state ref

That way it’s possible to mutate the contents of the promise.

For the representation type of the resolver, we’ll do something a little clever. It will simply be the same as a promise.

type 'a resolver = 'a promise

type 'a resolver = 'a promise

So internally, the two types are exactly the same. But externally no client of the Promise module will be able to distinguish them. In other words, we’re using the type system to control whether it’s possible to apply certain functions (e.g., state vs fulfill) to a promise.

To help implement the rest of the functions, let’s start by writing a helper function write_once : 'a promise -> 'a state -> unit to update the reference. This function will implement changing the state of the promise from pending to either fulfilled or rejected, and once the state has changed, it will not allow it to be changed again. That is, it enforces the “write once” invariant.

(** [write_once p s] changes the state of [p] to be [s].  If [p] and [s]
    are both pending, that has no effect.
    Raises: [Invalid_arg] if the state of [p] is not pending. *)
let write_once p s =
  if !p = Pending
  then p := s
  else invalid_arg "cannot write twice"

val write_once : 'a state ref -> 'a state -> unit = <fun>

Using that helper, we can implement the make function:

let make () =
  let p = ref Pending in
  p, p

val make : unit -> 'a state ref * 'a state ref = <fun>

The remaining functions in the interface are trivial to implement. Putting it altogether in a module, we have:

module Promise : PROMISE = struct
  type 'a state =
    | Pending
    | Fulfilled of 'a
    | Rejected of exn

  type 'a promise = 'a state ref

  type 'a resolver = 'a promise

  (** [write_once p s] changes the state of [p] to be [s]. If [p] and
      [s] are both pending, that has no effect. Raises: [Invalid_arg] if
      the state of [p] is not pending. *)
  let write_once p s =
    if !p = Pending then p := s else invalid_arg "cannot write twice"

  let make () =
    let p = ref Pending in
    (p, p)

  let return x = ref (Fulfilled x)

  let state p = !p

  let fulfill r x = write_once r (Fulfilled x)

  let reject r x = write_once r (Rejected x)
end

module Promise : PROMISE

8.7.5. Lwt Promises#

The types and names used in Lwt are a bit more obscure than those we used above. Lwt uses analogical terminology that comes from threads—but since Lwt does not actually implement threads, that terminology is not necessarily helpful. (We don’t mean to demean Lwt! It is a library that has been developing and changing over time.)

The Lwt interface includes the following declarations, which we have annotated with comments to compare them to the interface we implemented above:

module type Lwt = sig
  (* [Sleep] means pending. [Return] means fulfilled.
     [Fail] means rejected. *)
  type 'a state = Sleep | Return of 'a | Fail of exn

  (* a [t] is a promise *)
  type 'a t

  (* a [u] is a resolver *)
  type 'a u

  val state : 'a t -> 'a state

  (* [wakeup_later] means [fulfill] *)
  val wakeup_later : 'a u -> 'a -> unit

  (* [wakeup_later_exn] means [reject] *)
  val wakeup_later_exn : 'a u -> exn -> unit

  (* [wait] means [make] *)
  val wait : unit -> 'a t * 'a u

  val return : 'a -> 'a t
end

module type Lwt =
  sig
    type 'a state = Sleep | Return of 'a | Fail of exn
    type 'a t
    type 'a u
    val state : 'a t -> 'a state
    val wakeup_later : 'a u -> 'a -> unit
    val wakeup_later_exn : 'a u -> exn -> unit
    val wait : unit -> 'a t * 'a u
    val return : 'a -> 'a t
  end

Lwt’s implementation of that interface is much more complex than our own implementation above, because Lwt actually supports many more operations on promises. Nonetheless, the core ideas that we developed above provide sound intuition for what Lwt implements.

Here is some example Lwt code that you can try out in utop:

#require "lwt";;

let p, r = Lwt.wait();;

val p : '_weak1 Lwt.t = <abstr>
val r : '_weak1 Lwt.u = <abstr>

To avoid those weak type variables, we can provide a further hint to OCaml as to what type we want to eventually put into the promise. For example, if we wanted to have a promise that will eventually contain an int, we could write this code:

let (p : int Lwt.t), r = Lwt.wait ()

val p : int Lwt.t = <abstr>
val r : int Lwt.u = <abstr>

Now we can resolve the promise:

Lwt.state p

- : int Lwt.state = Lwt.Sleep

Lwt.wakeup_later r 42

- : unit = ()

Lwt.state p;;

- : int Lwt.state = Lwt.Return 42

Lwt.wakeup_later r 42

Exception: Invalid_argument "Lwt.wakeup_later".
Raised at Stdlib.invalid_arg in file "stdlib.ml", line 30, characters 20-45
Called from Stdlib__Fun.protect in file "fun.ml", line 33, characters 8-15
Re-raised at Stdlib__Fun.protect in file "fun.ml", line 38, characters 6-52
Called from Topeval.load_lambda in file "toplevel/byte/topeval.ml", line 89, characters 4-150

That last exception was raised because we attempted to resolve the promise a second time, which is not permitted.

To reject a promise, we can write similar code:

let (p : int Lwt.t), r = Lwt.wait ();;
Lwt.wakeup_later_exn r (Failure "nope");;
Lwt.state p;;

val p : int Lwt.t = <abstr>
val r : int Lwt.u = <abstr>

- : unit = ()

- : int Lwt.state = Lwt.Fail (Failure "nope")

Note that nothing we have implemented so far does anything concurrently. The promise abstraction by itself is not inherently concurrent. It’s just a data structure that can be written at most once, and that provides a means to control who can write to it (through the resolver).

8.7.6. Asynchronous I/O#

Now that we understand promises as a data abstraction, let’s turn to how they can be used for concurrency. The typical way they’re used with Lwt is for concurrent input and output (I/O).

The I/O functions that are part of the OCaml standard library are synchronous aka blocking: when you call such a function, it does not return until the I/O has been completed. “Synchronous” here refers to the synchronization between your code and the I/O function: your code does not get to execute again until the I/O code is done. “Blocking” refers to the fact that your code has to wait—it is blocked—until the I/O completes.

For example, the Stdlib.input_line : in_channel -> string function reads characters from an input channel until it reaches a newline character, then returns the characters it read. The type in_channel is abstract; it represents a source of data that can be read, such as a file, or the network, or the keyboard. The value Stdlib.stdin : in_channel represents the standard input channel, which is the channel which usually, by default, provides keyboard input.

If you run the following code in utop, you will observe the blocking behavior:

# ignore(input_line stdin); print_endline "done";;
<type your own input here>
done
- : unit = ()

The string "done" is not printed until after the input operation completes, which happens after you type Enter.

Synchronous I/O makes it impossible for a program to carry on other computations while it is waiting for the I/O operation to complete. For some programs that’s just fine. A text adventure game, for example, doesn’t have any background computations it needs to perform. But other programs, like spreadsheets or servers, would be improved by being able to carry on computations in the background rather than having to completely block while waiting for input.

Asynchronous aka non-blocking I/O is the opposite style of I/O. Asynchronous I/O operations return immediately, regardless of whether the input or output has been completed. That enables a program to launch an I/O operation, carry on doing other computations, and later come back to make use of the completed operation.

The Lwt library provides its own I/O functions in the Lwt_io module, which is in the lwt.unix package. The function Lwt_io.read_line : Lwt_io.input_channel -> string Lwt.t is the asynchronous equivalent of Stdlib.input_line. Similarly, Lwt_io.input_channel is the equivalent of the OCaml standard library’s in_channel, and Lwt_io.stdin represents the standard input channel.

Run this code in utop to observe the non-blocking behavior:

# #require "lwt.unix";;
# open Lwt_io;;
# ignore(read_line stdin); printl "done";;
done
- : unit = ()
# <type your own input here>

The string "done" is printed immediately by Lwt_io.printl, which is Lwt’s equivalent of Stdlib.print_endline, before you even type. Note that it’s best to use just one library’s I/O functions, rather than mix them together.

When you do type your input, you don’t see it echoed to the screen, because it’s happening in the background. Utop is still executing—it is not blocked—but your input is being sent to that read_line function instead of to utop. When you finally type Enter, the input operation completes, and you are back to interacting with utop.

Now imagine that instead of reading a line asynchronously, the program was a web server reading a file to be served to a client. And instead of printing a string, the server was delivering the contents of a different file that had completed reading to a different client. That’s why asynchronous I/O can be so useful: it helps to hide latency. Here, “latency” means waiting for data to be transferred from one place to another, e.g., from disk to memory. Latency hiding is an excellent use for concurrency.

Note that all the concurrency here is really coming from the operating system, which is what provides the underlying asynchronous I/O infrastructure. Lwt is just exposing that infrastructure to you through a library.

8.7.7. Promises and Asynchronous I/O#

The output type of Lwt_io.read_line is string Lwt.t, meaning that the function returns a string promise. Let’s investigate how the state of that promise evolves.

When the promise is returned from read_line, it is pending:

# let p = read_line stdin in Lwt.state p;;
- : string Lwt.state = Lwt.Sleep
# <now you have to type input and Enter to regain control of utop>

When the Enter key is pressed and input is completed, the promise returned from read_line should become fulfilled. For example, suppose you enter “Camels are bae”:

# let p = read_line stdin;;
val p : string Lwt.t = <abstr>
<now you type Camels are bae followed by Enter>
# p;;
- : string = "Camels are bae"

But, if you study that output carefully, you’ll notice something very strange just happened! After the let statement, p had type string Lwt.t, as expected. But when we evaluated p, it came back as type string. It’s as if the promise disappeared.

What’s actually happening is that utop has some special—and potentially confusing—functionality built into it that is related to Lwt. Specifically, whenever you try to directly evaluate a promise at the top level, utop will give you the contents of the promise, rather than the promise itself, and if the promise is not yet resolved, utop will block until the promise becomes resolved so that the contents can be returned.

So the output - : string = "Camels are bae" really means that p contains a fulfilled string whose value is "Camels are bae", not that p itself is a string. Indeed, the #show_val directive will show us that p is a promise:

# #show_val p;;
val p : string Lwt.t

To disable that feature of utop, or to re-enable it, call the function UTop.set_auto_run_lwt : bool -> unit, which changes how utop evaluates Lwt promises at the top level. You can see the behavior change in the following code:

# UTop.set_auto_run_lwt false;;
- : unit = ()
<now you type Camels are bae followed by Enter>
# p;;
- : string Lwt.state = <abstr>
# Lwt.state p;;
- : string Lwt.state = Lwt.Return "Camels are bae"

If you re-enable this “auto run” feature, and directly try to evaluate the promise returned by read_line, you’ll see that it behaves exactly like synchronous I/O, i.e., Stdlib.input_line:

# UTop.set_auto_run_lwt true;;
- : unit = ()
# read_line stdin;;
Camels are bae
- : string = "Camels are bae"

Because of the potential confusion, we will henceforth assume that auto running is disabled. A good way to make that happen is to put the following line in your .ocamlinit file:

UTop.set_auto_run_lwt false;;

8.7.8. Callbacks#

For a program to benefit from the concurrency provided by asynchronous I/O and promises, there needs to be a way for the program to make use of resolved promises. For example, if a web server is asynchronously reading and serving multiple files to multiple clients, the server needs a way to (i) become aware that a read has completed, and (ii) then do a new asynchronous write with the result of the read. In other words, programs need a mechanism for managing the dependencies among promises.

The mechanism provided in Lwt is named callbacks. A callback is a function that will be run sometime after a promise has been fulfilled, and it will receive as input the contents of the fulfilled promise. Think of it like asking your friend to do some work for you: they promise to do it, and to call you back on the phone with the result of the work sometime after they’ve finished.

Registering a callback. Here is a function that prints a string using Lwt’s version of the printf function:

let print_the_string str = Lwt_io.printf "The string is: %S\n" str

And here, repeated from the previous section, is our code that returns a promise for a string read from standard input:

let p = read_line stdin

To register the printing function as a callback for that promise, we use the function Lwt.bind, which binds the callback to the promise:

Lwt.bind p print_the_string

Sometime after p is fulfilled, hence contains a string, the callback function will be run with that string as its input. That causes the string to be printed.

Here’s a complete utop transcript as an example of that:

# let print_the_string str = Lwt_io.printf "The string is: %S\n" str;;
val print_the_string : string -> unit Lwt.t = <fun>
# let p = read_line stdin in Lwt.bind p print_the_string;;
- : unit Lwt.t = <abstr>
  <type Camels are bae followed by Enter>
# The string is: "Camels are bae"

Bind. The type of Lwt.bind is important to understand:

'a Lwt.t -> ('a -> 'b Lwt.t) -> 'b Lwt.t

The bind function takes a promise as its first argument. It doesn’t matter whether that promise has been resolved yet or not. As its second argument, bind takes a callback function. That callback takes an input which is the same type 'a as the contents of the promise. It’s not an accident that they have the same type: the whole idea is to eventually run the callback on the fulfilled promise, so the type the promise contains needs to be the same as the type the callback expects as input.

After being invoked on a promise and callback, e.g., bind p c, the bind function does one of three things, depending on the state of p:

  • If p is already fulfilled, then c is run immediately on the contents of p. The promise that is returned might or might not be pending, depending on what c does.

  • If p is already rejected, then c does not run. The promise that is returned is also rejected, with the same exception as p.

  • If p is pending, then bind does not wait for p to be resolved, nor for c to be run. Rather, bind just registers the callback to eventually be run when (or if) the promise is fulfilled. Therefore, the bind function returns a new promise. That promise will become fulfilled when (or if) the callback completes running, sometime in the future. Its contents will be whatever contents are contained within the promise that the callback itself returns.

Note

For the first case above: The Lwt source code claims that this behavior might change: under high load, c might be registered to run later. But as of v5.5.0 that behavior has not yet been activated. So, don’t worry about it—this paragraph is just here to future-proof this discussion.

Let’s consider that final case in more detail. We have one promise of type 'a Lwt.t and two promises of type 'b Lwt.t:

  • The promise of type 'a Lwt.t, call it promise X, is an input to bind. It was pending when bind was called, and when bind returns.

  • The first promise of type 'b Lwt.t, call it promise Y, is created by bind and returned to the user. It is pending at that point.

  • The second promise of type 'b Lwt.t, call it promise Z, has not yet been created. It will be created later, when promise X has been fulfilled, and the callback has been run on the contents of X. The callback then returns promise Z. There is no guarantee about the state of Z; it might well still be pending when returned by the callback.

  • When Z is finally fulfilled, the contents of Y are updated to be the same as the contents of Z.

The reason why bind is designed with this type is so that programmers can set up a sequential chain of callbacks. For example, the following code asynchronously reads one string; then when that string has been read, proceeds to asynchronously read a second string; then prints the concatenation of both strings:

Lwt.bind (read_line stdin) (fun s1 ->
  Lwt.bind (read_line stdin) (fun s2 ->
    Lwt_io.printf "%s\n" (s1^s2)));;

If you run that in utop, something slightly confusing will happen again: after you press Enter at the end of the first string, Lwt will allow utop to read one character. The problem is that we’re mixing Lwt input operations with utop input operations. It would be better to just create a program and run it from the command line.

To do that, put the following code in a file called read2.ml:

open Lwt_io

let p =
  Lwt.bind (read_line stdin) (fun s1 ->
    Lwt.bind (read_line stdin) (fun s2 ->
      Lwt_io.printf "%s\n" (s1^s2)))

let _ = Lwt_main.run p

We’ve added one new function: Lwt_main.run : 'a Lwt.t -> 'a. It waits for its input promise to be fulfilled, then returns the contents. This function is called only once in an entire program, near the end of the main file; and the input to it is typically a promise whose resolution indicates that all execution is finished.

Create a dune file:

(executable
 (name read2)
 (libraries lwt.unix))

And run the program, entering a couple strings:

dune exec ./read2.exe
My first string
My second string
My first stringMy second string

Now try removing the last line of read2.ml. You’ll see that the program exits immediately, without waiting for you to type.

Bind as an Operator. There is another syntax for bind that is used far more frequently than what we have seen so far. The Lwt.Infix module defines an infix operator written >>= that is the same as bind. That is, instead of writing bind p c you write p >>= c. This operator makes it much easier to write code without all the extra parentheses and indentations that our previous example had:

open Lwt_io
open Lwt.Infix

let p =
  read_line stdin >>= fun s1 ->
  read_line stdin >>= fun s2 ->
  Lwt_io.printf "%s\n" (s1^s2)

let _ = Lwt_main.run p

The way to visually parse the definition of p is to look at each line as computing some promised value. The first line, read_line stdin >>= fun s1 -> means that a promise is created, fulfilled, and its contents extracted under the name s1. The second line means the same, except that its contents are named s2. The third line creates a final promise whose contents are eventually extracted by Lwt_main.run, at which point the program may terminate.

The >>= operator is perhaps most famous from the functional language Haskell, which uses it extensively for monads. We’ll cover monads in a later section.

Bind as Let Syntax. There is a syntax extension for OCaml that makes using bind even simpler than the infix operator >>=. To install the syntax extension, run the following command:

$ opam install lwt_ppx

(You might need to opam update followed by opam upgrade first.)

With that extension, you can use a specialized let expression written let%lwt x = e1 in e2, which is equivalent to bind e1 (fun x -> e2) or e1 >>= fun x -> e2. We can rewrite our running example as follows:

(* to compile, add lwt_ppx to the libraries in the dune file *)
open Lwt_io

let p =
  let%lwt s1 = read_line stdin in
  let%lwt s2 = read_line stdin in
  Lwt_io.printf "%s\n" (s1^s2)

let _ = Lwt_main.run p

Now the code looks pretty much exactly like what its equivalent synchronous version would be. But don’t be fooled: all the asynchronous I/O, the promises, and the callbacks are still there. Thus, the evaluation of p first registers a callback with a promise, then moves on to the evaluation of Lwt_main.run without waiting for the first string to finish being read. To prove that to yourself, run the following code:

open Lwt_io

let p =
  let%lwt s1 = read_line stdin in
  let%lwt s2 = read_line stdin in
  Lwt_io.printf "%s\n" (s1^s2)

let _ = Lwt_io.printf "Got here first\n"

let _ = Lwt_main.run p

You’ll see that “Got here first” prints before you get a chance to enter any input.

Concurrent Composition. The Lwt.bind function provides a way to sequentially compose callbacks: first one callback is run, then another, then another, and so forth. There are other functions in the library for composition of many callbacks as a set. For example,

  • Lwt.join : unit Lwt.t list -> unit Lwt.t enables waiting upon multiple promises. Lwt.join ps returns a promise that is pending until all the promises in ps become resolved. You might register a callback on the return promise from the join to take care of some computation that needs all of a set of promises to be finished.

  • Lwt.pick : 'a Lwt.t list -> 'a Lwt.t also enables waiting upon multiple promises, but Lwt.pick ps returns a promise that is pending until at least one promise in ps becomes resolved. You might register a callback on the return promise from the pick to take care of some computation that needs just one of a set of promises to be finished, but doesn’t care which one.

8.7.9. Implementing Callbacks#

When a callback is registered with bind or one of the other syntaxes, it is added to a list of callbacks that is stored with the promise. Eventually, when the promise has been fulfilled, the Lwt resolution loop runs the callbacks registered for the promise. There is no guarantee about the execution order of callbacks for a promise. In other words, the execution order is nondeterministic. If the order matters, the programmer needs to use the composition operators (such as bind and join) to enforce an ordering. If the promise never becomes fulfilled (or is rejected), none of its callbacks will ever be run.

Note

Lwt also supports registering functions that are run after a promise is rejected. Lwt.catch and try%lwt are used for this purpose. They are counterparts to Lwt.bind and let%lwt.

Once again, it’s important to keep track of where the concurrency really comes from: the OS. There might be many asynchronous I/O operations occurring at the OS level. But at the OCaml level, the resolution loop is sequential, meaning that only one callback can ever be running at a time.

Finally, the resolution loop never attempts to interrupt a callback. So if the callback goes into an infinite loop, no other callback will ever get to run. That makes Lwt a cooperative concurrency mechanism, rather than preemptive.

To better understand callback resolution, let’s implement it ourselves. We’ll use the Promise data structure we developed earlier. To start, we add a bind operator to the Promise signature:

module type PROMISE = sig
  ...

  (** [p >>= c] registers callback [c] with promise [p].
      When the promise is fulfilled, the callback will be run
      on the promises's contents.  If the promise is never
      fulfilled, the callback will never run. *)
  val ( >>= ) : 'a promise -> ('a -> 'b promise) -> 'b promise
end

Next, let’s re-develop the entire Promise structure. We start off just like before:

module Promise : PROMISE = struct
  type 'a state = Pending | Fulfilled of 'a | Rejected of exn
  ...

But now to implement the representation type of promises, we use a record with mutable fields. The first field is the state of the promise, and it corresponds to the ref we used before. The second field is more interesting and is discussed below.

  (** RI: the input may not be [Pending]. *)
  type 'a handler = 'a state -> unit

  (** RI: if [state <> Pending] then [handlers = []]. *)
  type 'a promise = {
    mutable state : 'a state;
    mutable handlers : 'a handler list
  }

A handler is a new abstraction: a function that takes a non-pending state. It will be used to fulfill and reject promises when their state is ready to switch away from pending. The primary use for a handler will be to run callbacks. As a representation invariant, we require that only pending promises may have handlers waiting in their list. Once the state becomes non-pending, i.e., either fulfilled or rejected, the handlers will all be processed and removed from the list.

This helper function that enqueues a handler on a promise’s handler list will be helpful later:

  let enqueue
      (handler : 'a state -> unit)
      (promise : 'a promise) : unit
    =
    promise.handlers <- handler :: promise.handlers

We continue to pun resolvers and promises internally:

  type 'a resolver = 'a promise

Because we changed the representation type from a ref to a record, we have to update a few of the functions in trivial ways:

  (** [write_once p s] changes the state of [p] to be [s].  If [p] and [s]
      are both pending, that has no effect.
      Raises: [Invalid_arg] if the state of [p] is not pending. *)
  let write_once p s =
    if p.state = Pending
    then p.state <- s
    else invalid_arg "cannot write twice"

  let make () =
    let p = {state = Pending; handlers = []} in
    p, p

  let return x =
    {state = Fulfilled x; handlers = []}

  let state p = p.state

Now we get to the trickier parts of the implementation. To fulfill or reject a promise, the first thing we need to do is to call write_once on it, as we did before. Now we also need to process the handlers. Before doing so, we mutate the handlers list to be empty to ensure that the RI holds.

  (** Requires: [st] may not be [Pending]. *)
  let fulfill_or_reject (r : 'a resolver) (st : 'a state) =
    assert (st <> Pending);
    let handlers = r.handlers in
    r.handlers <- [];
    write_once r st;
    List.iter (fun f -> f st) handlers

  let reject r x =
    fulfill_or_reject r (Rejected x)

  let fulfill r x =
    fulfill_or_reject r (Fulfilled x)

Finally, the implementation of >>= is the trickiest part. First, if the promise is already fulfilled, let’s go ahead and immediately run the callback on it:

  let ( >>= )
      (input_promise : 'a promise)
      (callback : 'a -> 'b promise) : 'b promise
    =
    match input_promise.state with
    | Fulfilled x -> callback x

Second, if the promise is already rejected, then we return a promise that is rejected with the same exception:

    | Rejected exc -> {state = Rejected exc; handlers = []}

Third, if the promise is pending, we need to do more work. The bind function needs to return a new promise. That promise will become fulfilled when (or if) the callback completes running, sometime in the future. Its contents will be whatever contents are contained within the promise that the callback itself returns.

So, we create a new promise and resolver called output_promise and output_resolver. That promise is what bind returns. Before returning it, we use a helper function handler_of_callback (described below) to transform the callback into a handler, and enqueue that handler on the promise. That ensures the handler will be run when the promise later becomes resolved:

    | Pending ->
      let output_promise, output_resolver = make () in
      enqueue (handler_of_callback callback output_resolver) input_promise;
      output_promise

All that’s left is to implement that helper function to create handlers from callbacks. The first two cases, below, are simple. It would violate the RI to call a handler on a pending state. And if the state is rejected, then the handler should propagate that rejection to the resolver, which causes the promise returned by bind to also be rejected.

  let handler_of_callback
      (callback : 'a -> 'b promise)
      (resolver : 'b resolver) : 'a handler
    = function
      | Pending -> failwith "handler RI violated"
      | Rejected exc -> reject resolver exc

But if the state is fulfiled, then the callback provided by the user to bind can—at last!—be run on the contents of the fulfilled promise. Running the callback produces a new promise. It might already be rejected or fulfilled, in which case that state again propagates.

      | Fulfilled x ->
        let promise = callback x in
        match promise.state with
        | Fulfilled y -> resolve resolver y
        | Rejected exc -> reject resolver exc

But the promise might still be pending. In that case, we need to enqueue a new handler whose purpose is to do the propagation once the result is available:

        | Pending -> enqueue (handler resolver) promise

where handler is a new helper function that creates a very simple handler to do that propagation:

  let handler (resolver : 'a resolver) : 'a handler
    = function
      | Pending -> failwith "handler RI violated"
      | Rejected exc -> reject resolver exc
      | Fulfilled x -> resolve resolver x

The Lwt implementation of bind follows essentially the same algorithm as we just implemented. Note that there is no concurrency in bind: as we said above, it’s the OS that provides the concurrency.

8.7.10. The Full Implementation#

Here’s all of that code in one executable block:

(** A signature for Lwt-style promises, with better names. *)
module type PROMISE = sig
  type 'a state =
    | Pending
    | Fulfilled of 'a
    | Rejected of exn

  type 'a promise

  type 'a resolver

  (** [make ()] is a new promise and resolver. The promise is pending. *)
  val make : unit -> 'a promise * 'a resolver

  (** [return x] is a new promise that is already fulfilled with value
      [x]. *)
  val return : 'a -> 'a promise

  (** [state p] is the state of the promise. *)
  val state : 'a promise -> 'a state

  (** [fulfill r x] resolves the promise [p] associated with [r] with
      value [x], meaning that [state p] will become [Fulfilled x].
      Requires: [p] is pending. *)
  val fulfill : 'a resolver -> 'a -> unit

  (** [reject r x] rejects the promise [p] associated with [r] with
      exception [x], meaning that [state p] will become [Rejected x].
      Requires: [p] is pending. *)
  val reject : 'a resolver -> exn -> unit

  (** [p >>= c] registers callback [c] with promise [p].
      When the promise is fulfilled, the callback will be run
      on the promises's contents.  If the promise is never
      fulfilled, the callback will never run. *)
  val ( >>= ) : 'a promise -> ('a -> 'b promise) -> 'b promise
end

module Promise : PROMISE = struct
  type 'a state = Pending | Fulfilled of 'a | Rejected of exn

  (** RI: the input may not be [Pending]. *)
  type 'a handler = 'a state -> unit

  (** RI: if [state <> Pending] then [handlers = []]. *)
  type 'a promise = {
    mutable state : 'a state;
    mutable handlers : 'a handler list
  }

  let enqueue
      (handler : 'a state -> unit)
      (promise : 'a promise) : unit
    =
    promise.handlers <- handler :: promise.handlers

  type 'a resolver = 'a promise

  (** [write_once p s] changes the state of [p] to be [s].  If [p] and [s]
      are both pending, that has no effect.
      Raises: [Invalid_arg] if the state of [p] is not pending. *)
  let write_once p s =
    if p.state = Pending
    then p.state <- s
    else invalid_arg "cannot write twice"

  let make () =
    let p = {state = Pending; handlers = []} in
    p, p

  let return x =
    {state = Fulfilled x; handlers = []}

  let state p = p.state

  (** Requires: [st] may not be [Pending]. *)
  let fulfill_or_reject (r : 'a resolver) (st : 'a state) =
    assert (st <> Pending);
    let handlers = r.handlers in
    r.handlers <- [];
    write_once r st;
    List.iter (fun f -> f st) handlers

  let reject r x =
    fulfill_or_reject r (Rejected x)

  let fulfill r x =
    fulfill_or_reject r (Fulfilled x)

  let handler (resolver : 'a resolver) : 'a handler
    = function
      | Pending -> failwith "handler RI violated"
      | Rejected exc -> reject resolver exc
      | Fulfilled x -> fulfill resolver x

  let handler_of_callback
      (callback : 'a -> 'b promise)
      (resolver : 'b resolver) : 'a handler
    = function
      | Pending -> failwith "handler RI violated"
      | Rejected exc -> reject resolver exc
      | Fulfilled x ->
        let promise = callback x in
        match promise.state with
        | Fulfilled y -> fulfill resolver y
        | Rejected exc -> reject resolver exc
        | Pending -> enqueue (handler resolver) promise

  let ( >>= )
      (input_promise : 'a promise)
      (callback : 'a -> 'b promise) : 'b promise
    =
    match input_promise.state with
    | Fulfilled x -> callback x
    | Rejected exc -> {state = Rejected exc; handlers = []}
    | Pending ->
      let output_promise, output_resolver = make () in
      enqueue (handler_of_callback callback output_resolver) input_promise;
      output_promise
end

module type PROMISE =
  sig
    type 'a state = Pending | Fulfilled of 'a | Rejected of exn
    type 'a promise
    type 'a resolver
    val make : unit -> 'a promise * 'a resolver
    val return : 'a -> 'a promise
    val state : 'a promise -> 'a state
    val fulfill : 'a resolver -> 'a -> unit
    val reject : 'a resolver -> exn -> unit
    val ( >>= ) : 'a promise -> ('a -> 'b promise) -> 'b promise
  end

module Promise : PROMISE
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