IPC::Shareable alternative in ActivePerl

[MillerH]

Is there an alternative module that could be used with ActivePerl in the below coding example from Perl Cookbook (version 1) Solution 16.12 - Sharing Variables in different processes?

#!/usr/bin/perl
# sharetest - test shared variables across forks.

use IPC::Shareable;

my $buffer;
my $handle = tie $buffer, 'IPC::Shareable', undef, { destroy => 1 };
$SIG{INT} = sub { die "$$ dying\n" };

my @kids;
for (1 .. 10) {
	my $child;
	unless ($child = fork) {	# I'm the child
		die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined $child;
		squabble();
		exit;
	}
	push @kids, $child;	# in case we care about their pids
}

while (1) {
	print "Buffer is $buffer\n";
	sleep 1;
}
die "Not reached";

sub squabble {
	my $i = 0;
	while (1) {
		next if $buffer =~ /^$$\b/o;
		$handle->shlock();
		$i++;
		$buffer = "$$ $i";
		$handle->shunlock();
	}
}

1;

__END__

This code works fine on my linux box, but the IPC::Shareable module appears to not be available for ActivePerl. Is there a module or method that I could use instead for this example? Is it time to let go of my version 1 book (now three years behind the times) and upgrade to version 2?

 

[KevinADC]

maybe:

http://search.cpan.org/~roger/Win32-MMF-0.09e/MMF/Shareable.pm

- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[MillerH]

That might work.

My PPM currently does not see this module though. I only have the default repositories currently specified. Are there any others that I should add, specifically so that I could use ppm to download this module?

Current Repositories (default installation):

ppm> rep describe 1
Describing Active Repository 1:
    Name: ActiveState PPM2 Repository
Location:
[URL unfurl="true"]http://ppm.ActiveState.com/cgibin/PPM/ppmserver-5.8-windows.pl?urn:/PPMServer[/URL]
    Type: PPMServer 2.0

ppm> rep describe 2
Describing Active Repository 2:
    Name: ActiveState Package Repository
Location:
[URL unfurl="true"]http://ppm.ActiveState.com/PPM/ppmserver-5.8-windows.plex?urn:/PPM/Server/SQL[/URL]
    Type: PPMServer 3.0

 

[KevinADC]

try:

ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN

http://www.bribes.org/perl/ppm

- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!

 

[MillerH]

Problem solved.

My final difficulty was fixed when I finally noticed that Win32::MMF::Shareable was a module in the package Win32::MMF instead of a standalone. Therefore, Installing Win32::MMF worked, and some minor tweaking made the code example functional.

Thanks for your help KevinADC. I'm still not entirely happy, since this isn't a cross platform solution, but I'm on to real problems for now. I also went ahead and ordered Perl Cookbook Ver 2 so that I would not be dealing with outdated methods anymore. Or at least less outdated. :]

 

[KevinADC]

Glad I could help. Not even perl came make everything cross platform compatible.

- Kevin, perl coder unexceptional!