null - Man Page

Create and manipulate null channels

Synopsis

package require Tcl

package require memchan

null

Description

The command described here is only available in a not-yet released version of the package. Use the CVS to get the sources.

null

creates a null channel which absorbs everything written into it. Reading from it is not possible, or rather will always return zero bytes. These channels are essentially Tcl-specific variants of the null device for unixoid operating systems (/dev/null). Transferring the generated channel between interpreters is possible but does not make much sense.

Options

Memory channels created by null provide one additional option to set or query.

-delay ?milliseconds?

A null channel is always writable and readable. This means that all fileevent-handlers will fire continuously.  To avoid starvation of other event sources the events raised by this channel type have a configurable delay. This option is set in milliseconds and defaults to 5.

A null channel is always writable and never readable. This means that a writable fileevent-handler will fire continuously and a readable fileevent-handler never at all. The exception to the latter is only the destruction of the channel which will cause the delivery of an eof event to a readable handler.

See Also

fifo, fifo2, memchan, random, zero

Keywords

channel, i/o, in-memory channel, null

Info

2.2 Memory channels