ALIB Class Reference

Collaboration diagram for ALIB:

Class Description

---

This class is a 100% static placeholder for global methods and fields of ALib. Among the things implemented here are:

• Collecting information on the executed process and its environment.
• Initialization of several ALib components with methods Init and TerminationCleanUp.
• Thread sleep methods

Public Static Fields
static Configuration	Config =null
static AString	ConfigCategory = new AString( "ALIB" )
static readonly int	MainThreadID = Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId
static readonly int	Revision =0
static SmartLock	StdOutputStreamsLock = new SmartLock()
static readonly int	Version =2402
static VariableDecl	WAIT_FOR_KEY_PRESS
static bool	WaitForKeyPressOnTermination

Public Static Methods
static void	Init (Configuration config)
static void	Init (String[] args=null)
static bool	IsWindowsOS ()
static bool	ReadBoolean (Substring src)
static Case	ReadCase (Substring src)
static Inclusion	ReadInclusion (Substring src)
static void	Sleep (Ticks ticks)
static void	SleepMicros (long microsecs)
static void	SleepMillis (int millisecs)
static void	SleepNanos (long nanosecs)
static void	TerminationCleanUp ()

Private Static Fields
static ? bool	_sysInfo_HasConsoleWindow
static bool	isInitialized = false
static char[]	trueValuesBoolean = { 't', '1', 'y' }
static char[]	trueValuesCase = { 's', 't', '1', 'y' }
static char[]	trueValuesInclusion = { 'i', 't', '1', 'y' }

Private Static Methods
static void	init ()

Properties
static bool	HasConsoleWindow [get]

Member Function Documentation

init()

static void init ( )

inlinestaticprivate

---

Used by Init functions.

Init() [1/2]

static void Init ( Configuration  config )

inlinestatic

---

Variant of method Init, accepting a configuration. This will be stored in field Config and used for loading and storing ALib variables.

Parameters

config

The configuration object to use with ALib variables.

Init() [2/2]

static void Init ( String[]  args = null )

inlinestatic

---

This method must be called prior to using ALib, e.g. at the beginning of the main() method of an application. It is OK, to call this method more than once, which allows independent code blocks (e.g. libraries) to bootstrap ALIB independently. However, only the first invocation is effective

The very first invocation should not be interrupted by a parallel invocation of a second thread. Consequently, with more complex applications it is recommended to explicitly invoke this method once when the software is bootstrapped.

If command line parameters should be used for configuring ALox, then the very first call to this method has to provide the argc and argv parameters. Subsequent calls to this method with different parameters do not change the setup.

If other, custom configuration data sources should be used already with this method use overloaded method ALIB.Init(Configuration).

Note

In the current implementation, the only configuration variable read with this method is WAIT_FOR_KEY_PRESS.

Parameters

args	Parameters taken from standard C# method main() (the list of command line arguments). Defaults to null.

IsWindowsOS()

static bool IsWindowsOS ( )

inlinestatic

---

Detects if this is running on Windows OS.

Returns

true if the calling process is running on Windows

ReadBoolean()

static bool ReadBoolean ( Substring  src )

inlinestatic

---

Interprets given src as a boolean value. enums.Inclusion. If the case insensitive comparison of the first non-whitespace characters of the string with with values "t", "1", "y", "on", "ok" matches, true is returned. Otherwise, including the case that src is 'nulled', false is returned.

Parameters

src	The string to 'parse'.

Returns

The Case value read.

ReadCase()

static Case ReadCase ( Substring  src )

inlinestatic

---

Interprets given src as a value of enum type enums.Case. If the case insensitive comparison of the first non-whitespace characters of the string with values "s", "y", "t", "1" matches, Case.Sensitive is returned. Otherwise, including the case that src is 'nulled', Case.Ignore is returned.

Parameters

src	The string to 'parse'.

Returns

The Case value read.

ReadInclusion()

static Inclusion ReadInclusion ( Substring  src )

inlinestatic

---

Interprets given src as a value of enum type enums.Inclusion. If the case insensitive comparison of the first non-whitespace characters of the string with values "i", "y", "t", "1" matches, Inclusion.Include is returned. Otherwise, including the case that src is 'nulled', Inclusion.Exclude is returned.

Parameters

src	The string to 'parse'.

Returns

The Inclusion value read.

Sleep()

static void Sleep ( Ticks  ticks )

inlinestatic

---

Suspends the current thread by calling Thread.Sleep(). Provided for compatibility with other platform versions of ALib. Variants of this method are SleepMillis, SleepMicros and SleepNanos.

Parameters

ticks

Sleep time in Ticks.

SleepMicros()

static void SleepMicros ( long  microsecs )

inlinestatic

---

Suspends the current thread by calling Thread.Sleep(). Provided for compatibility with other platform versions of ALib. Variants of this method are Sleep, SleepMillis and SleepNanos.

Parameters

microsecs

Sleep time in microseconds.

SleepMillis()

static void SleepMillis ( int  millisecs )

inlinestatic

---

Suspends the current thread by calling Thread.Sleep(). Provided for compatibility with other platform versions of ALib. Variants of this method are Sleep, SleepMicros and SleepNanos.

Parameters

millisecs

Sleep time in milliseconds.

SleepNanos()

static void SleepNanos ( long  nanosecs )

inlinestatic

---

Suspends the current thread by calling Thread.Sleep(). Provided for compatibility with other platform versions of ALib. Variants of this method are Sleep, SleepMillis and SleepMicros.

Parameters

nanosecs

Sleep time in microseconds.

TerminationCleanUp()

static void TerminationCleanUp ( )

inlinestatic

---

Got nothing to do in C#.

Member Data Documentation

_sysInfo_HasConsoleWindow

? bool _sysInfo_HasConsoleWindow

staticprivate

Internal flag used to by property HasConsoleWindow

Config

Configuration Config =null

static

The configuration used by ALox. This is received or created with overloaded Init methods. It might be shared with other libraries or can be an instance explicitly dedicated to the ALox library.
The option to use an exclusive one may be used to store ALox configuration variables in different configuration files, e.g. to reduce "clutter" of an applications' then "main" configuration file.
Changes should only be made at very initial, single threaded bootstrap code, with the invocation of the according method Init(Configuration).

See also

Field ConfigCategory.

ConfigCategory

AString ConfigCategory = new AString( "ALIB" )

static

The name of the configuration category of configuration variables used by the AWorx library.
Defaults to "ALIB".
6 This value can be changed to avoid conflicts between applications (especially in respect to environment variable settings). Changes should be placed at very initial bootstrap code, before the invocation of Init.

isInitialized

bool isInitialized = false

staticprivate

State of initialization, used to avoid double initialization.

MainThreadID

readonly int MainThreadID = Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId

static

The ID of the thread that initialized this static field. This is supposedly the "main" thread.

Revision

readonly int Revision =0

static

The revision number of this release. Each ALib Version is initially released as revision 0. Pure bug-fix releases that do not change the interface of ALib are holding the same Version but an increased number in this field.

StdOutputStreamsLock

SmartLock StdOutputStreamsLock = new SmartLock()

static

This is a smart mutex that allows to lock an applications' standard output streams.

In multi-threaded processes, to protect the output streams from concurrent access, this smart lock might be used by any entity that writes data to the streams. Before it can be used (acquired and released), it is needed to register with the object using SmartLock.AddAcquirer. This has to be done once per thread that aims to write to the stream. Then, prior to writing, this object has to be acquired and after writing released.

Because often, the standard output stream and standard error stream are identical, ALib provides one single lock for both, to protect also against interwoven standard output and error information.

If the 'entity' that is registering is not of type ThreadLock it is allowed to provide null in the parameter of method AddAcquirer. In this case, the process of adding and removing acquirers is not performed in a thread safe way. Therefore it is advised to register so called anonymous (null) acquirers only at bootstrap time, when no parallel threads were started, yet.

If an application is deemed to always write to the standard output streams from within multiple threads, an alternative to registering each writing entity, is to invoke AddAcquirer just two times in a row with null at the start of a process and then never do this again (and never de-register). This way, no thread needs to register/deregister but threads may still Acquire and Release the lock without being registered. In other words, once a smart lock is enabled, subsequent registrations are just used to count and identify the de-registration.

Note

The advantage of the SmartLock is that if only one 'entity' registered, no system mutexes will be used with Acquire and Release, hence there is a performance gain. Such gain is not noticeable for the 'slow' terminal console output, but it is for fast, buffered output streams.

Logging library ALox, which is built on ALib, will register whenever a Logger is used that writes to the standard output stream. Hence, applications that in parallel use, e.g. Console.WriteLine, should register at bootstrap and acquire this instance prior to writing. This way, log output and other application output is not mixed, but separated in different Lines.

trueValuesBoolean

char [] trueValuesBoolean = { 't', '1', 'y' }

staticprivate

Strings used to identify a boolean value from a string representation

trueValuesCase

char [] trueValuesCase = { 's', 't', '1', 'y' }

staticprivate

Strings used to identify an enum Case from a string representation

trueValuesInclusion

char [] trueValuesInclusion = { 'i', 't', '1', 'y' }

staticprivate

Strings used to identify an enum Inclusion from a string representation

Version

readonly int Version =2402

static

The ALib version. The versioning follows the scheme YYMM (2-digit year, 2-digit month) of the initial release date. Besides this version number, field Revision indicates if this is a revised version of a former release.

WAIT_FOR_KEY_PRESS

VariableDecl WAIT_FOR_KEY_PRESS

static

Initial value:

= new VariableDecl(
 
            ALIB.ConfigCategory,   null,     "WAIT_FOR_KEY_PRESS",
            "",
            '\0', null, Variable.FormatHint.None,
            "If true, the process waits for a key stroke on termination. If empty, under Windows \n"
          + "behavior is detected, under other OSes, defaults to false." )

Configuration variable declaration.

WaitForKeyPressOnTermination

bool WaitForKeyPressOnTermination

static

If true, within TerminationCleanUp, it is waited for a key press in the console window.
By default, this flag is enabled when debugging a console application under Visual Studio.
This default behavior can be overruled by setting configuration variable ALIB_WAIT_FOR_KEY_PRESS.
In addition, this public flag may be modified at runtime.

Property Documentation

HasConsoleWindow

bool HasConsoleWindow

staticget

Determines if a console is attached to this process

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The documentation for this class was generated from the following file:

• ALib.cs