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From: cs395t54@cs.utexas.edu (Pow Hwee Tan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Re: Dynamically creating arrays of processes
Keywords: Non VAL limits in PAR FORs
Message-ID: <5102@cs.utexas.edu>
Date: 26 Mar 89 05:12:31 GMT
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Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
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Although Occam does not allow dynamic creating of processes, there
is a way of getting around it, which is mentioned in Alan Burn's
book on Occam programming. 

This method requires you to know the maximum number of processes you
want to create.  Suppose the max number of processes is max.p and
the variable number of processes you want to create is amount.p then
one can write this in the program:

  PAR i = 0 FOR max.p
    IF 
      i >= amount.p  -- extra process
        SKIP  -- skip them
      TRUE
        SEQ
          -- insert what you want to do here.

Note that this method still requires static binding on the number
of processes you can create at compile time, and you will
waste some amount of CPU time because of the extra processes
created and SKIP.

ph