A purely functional data structure that describes a process. This process may evaluate actions in an effect type F, emit any number of output values of type O (or None), and may a) terminate with a single result of type R; or b) terminate abnormally by raising (inside the effect F) an exception, or c) terminate because it was cancelled by another process, or d) not terminate.
Like types from other effect libraries, pulls are pure and immutable values. They preserve referential transparency.
=== Chunking ===
The output values of a pull are emitted not one by one, but in chunks. A Chunk is an immutable sequence with constant-time indexed lookup. For example, a pull p: Pull[F, Byte, R] internally operates and emits Chunk[Byte] values, which can wrap unboxed byte arrays -- avoiding boxing/unboxing costs. The Pull API provides mechanisms for working at both the chunk level and the individual element level. Generally, working at the chunk level will result in better performance but at the cost of more complex implementations
A pull only emits non-empty chunks.
However, chunks are not merely an operational matter of efficiency. Each pull is emitted from a chunk atomically, which is to say, any errors or interruptions in a pull can only happen between chunks, not within a chunk. For instance, if creating a new chunk of values fails (raises an uncaught exception) while creating an intermediate value, then it fails to create the entire chunk and previous values are discarded.
=== Evaluation ===
Like other functional effect types (e.g. cats.effect.IO), a pull describes a process or computation. It is not a running process nor a handle for the result of a spawned, running process, like scala.concurrent.Future.
A pull can be converted to a stream and then compiled to an effectful value. For a Pull[F, O, Unit], the result of compilation is a combination, via the monad instance of F, of all the actions in the effect F present in the pull. The result of that F action is the result of combining the outputs emitted by the pull, in the order it emits them, using a fold function. Depending on that function, outputs may be collected into a list (or vector or array or ...), combined together into a single value, or just discarded altogether (by draining the pull).
Compilation is pull-based, rather than push-based (hence the name of the datatype). It is the compilation process itself, that determines when the evaluation of each single effect can proceed or is held back. Effects and outputs later in the pull are not performed or emitted, unless and until the compilation calls for them.
=== Resource scoping ===
The effects in a Pull may operate on resources, which must be retained during the execution of the pull, may be shared by several pulls, and must be properly finalised when no longer needed, regardless of whether the pull completed successfully or not. A pull tracks its resources using '''scopes''', which register how many pulls are actively using each resource, and finalises resources when no longer used.
Some operations of the Pull API can be used to introduce new resource scopes, or resource boundaries.
=== Functional typeclasses ===
The Pull data structure is a "free" implementation of Monad and has an instance for cats.effect.kernel.Sync.
For any types F[_] and O, a Pull[F, O, *] holds the following laws:
pure >=> f == ff >=> pure == f(f >=> g) >=> h == f >=> (g >=> h)wheref >=> gis defined asa => a flatMap f flatMap ghandleErrorWith(raiseError(e))(f) == f(e)
Type parameters
- F[_]
-
the type of effect that can be performed by this pull. An effect type of
Nothing, also known infs2by the aliasPure, indicates that this pull perform no effectful actions. Note:Nothingis a polykinded type, so it can also be applied as an argument to the type parameterF[_]. - O
-
The outputs emitted by this Pull. An output type of
Nothingmeans that this pull does not emit any outputs. - R
-
The type of result returned by this Pull upon successful termination. An output type of
Nothingindicates that this pull cannot terminate successfully: it may fail, be cancelled, or never terminate.
Attributes
- Companion
- object
- Source
- Pull.scala
- Graph
-
- Supertypes
-
class Objecttrait Matchableclass Any