Channel Synchronization in AngelScript

Channel synchronization can be implemented in AngelScript using a combination of threads and shared variables. Here’s an example of using a shared boolean variable to wait for a thread to finish. When waiting for multiple threads to finish, you may prefer to use a more advanced synchronization mechanism.

import std.threading;
import std.datetime;

// This is the function we'll run in a thread. The 
// shared 'done' variable will be used to notify the main thread 
// that this function's work is done.
void worker(shared bool &done) {
    print("working...");
    sleep(1000); // Sleep for 1 second
    print("done\n");

    // Set the shared variable to true to notify that we're done.
    done = true;
}

void main() {
    // Create a shared boolean variable
    shared bool done = false;

    // Start a worker thread, passing the shared variable
    thread workerThread = thread(worker, done);

    // Block until we receive a notification from the
    // worker through the shared variable
    while (!done) {
        yield();
    }

    // Wait for the thread to finish
    workerThread.join();
}

To run the program:

$ as channel-synchronization.as
working...done

If you removed the while (!done) loop from this program, the program would exit before the worker even started.

In this AngelScript version:

1. We use the std.threading module to create and manage threads.
2. Instead of channels, we use a shared boolean variable done to synchronize between threads.
3. The worker function takes a reference to this shared variable.
4. In the main function, we create the thread and pass the shared variable to it.
5. We use a while loop to wait for the done variable to become true, yielding the CPU in each iteration.
6. Finally, we join the thread to ensure it’s completely finished before the program exits.

This approach mimics the channel synchronization concept from the original example, adapting it to AngelScript’s threading model.