23 Feb
2011
23 Feb
'11
11:08 a.m.
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 3:30 AM, Alberto G. Corona
The point is that pure data structures can not be used as shared data in multithreaded environments. They must be encapsulated in mutable blocking references, such is MVars, and the whole update process blocks any other thread . (it is worst when using TVars) So they are not a replacement for mutable data structures such is Data.HashTable.
Depends on your use case. With one writer and multiple readers an IORef containing a persistent data structure works well. Readers do not block writers and can they execute concurrently. HashTable is not a concurrent data structure. You need e.g. a lock free mutable hash table. Johan