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What are linux blocking and non blocking calls

Asked by Gaurav Pawaskar

I want to know what is meaning of linux blocking and non blocking calls. Is it related to thread, IO, process or something else?

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marcobra (Marco Braida)
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Best marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

go to "open() in non-blocking mode" into this doc http://davmac.org/davpage/linux/async-io.html

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mycae (mycae) said : 		#2

Blocking and non-blocking descriptions tell you about program flow.

if I have a function

"doTheThing()"

and I write

print "doing the thing"
doTheThing()
print "done the thing"

By definitiniton a blocking function is one where I can be certain that "the thing" will have been done when the function "doTheThing" finishes.

On the other hand, I cannot be sure that a non-blocking thing will have finished doing whatever it was supposed to when I finish the function call. All I know is that I have initiated the "doingTheThing" process, and it will complete at some point.

Usually non-blocking calls have a blocking check function that you can use later to confirm that the action had completed.

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Gaurav Pawaskar (gaurav-pawaskar) said : 		#3

Thanks marcobra (Marco Braida), that solved my question.