Software transactional memory
Software Transactional Memory (STM) is a powerful abstraction designed for modifying state in concurrent programming. It enables the writing of code that accesses shared state concurrently, facilitating easy composition while maintaining safety guarantees. One of the key advantages of using STM is that it prevents deadlocks and race conditions in programs running within its transactions. The foundational elements of STM are Transactional Variables or TVars.
Conceptually, a TVar is a wrapper around a variable that adds a layer of protection against concurrent modifications. Modifying a TVar requires operating within the STM context. This can be achieved by writing an extension function with STM as the receiver. This approach ensures that modifications to shared state are safely managed within the structured framework of STM, reducing the complexity and potential errors associated with concurrent state changes.
In order to work with Arrow STM, we...
