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Overview

APLProcess is a cross-platform utility that enables you to easily start additional processes running Dyalog APL. This can be useful in a number of scenarios including:

  • to distribute the processing load across multiple processors. This is what the isolate workspace does.
  • to delegate processing to another process so that if there is some sort of failure, the primary process is not impacted.

APLProcess runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS. ssh support, which will enable you to start an APL process on another platform using the ssh protocol, is forthcoming.

Terminology

Parent Process
This is the process from where APLProcess is used to start "child" processes.
Child Process
This is a process started by a "parent" process. Each child process has a reference back to the "parent" process in the form of a "parent process ID" (PPID).

Note

While APLProcess itself is ⎕IO and ⎕ML insensitive, the examples in this documentation assume an environment of (⎕IO ⎕ML)←1.

Obtaining APLProcess

APLProcess is included with your Dyalog APL installation. To bring it into your workspace:

      ]import [ns] APLProcess

or, under program control, do:

      ⎕SE.Link.Import [ns] 'APLProcess'

where ns is an optional namespace name or reference in which to load APLProcess. If ns is not specified, APLProcess will be loaded into the current namespace.

Dyalog APL versions before 19.0 (using SALT)

      ]load APLProcess [-target=ns]

or, under program control, do:

      ⎕SE.SALT.Load 'APLProcess [-target=ns]'

-target=ns optionally specifies the namespace in which to load APLProcess where ns is the namespace name. If not specified, APLProcess will be loaded into the current namespace.

Upgrading to the Latest APLProcess

The documentation describes the latest released version of APLProcess which may be more recent than the version that came pre-installed with your Dyalog APL. Use APLProcess.Version to check the APLProcess version number.

The latest released version of APLProcess can be downloaded from the Assets section of the latest release page on GitHub.

APLProcess is Available as a Tatin Package

Tatin is a package manager for APL-based packages. APLProcess is available as a Tatin package. If you have the Tatin client installed, you can load APLProcess using:

      ]TATIN.LoadPackages APLProcess

The Tatin client will be included in your Dyalog installation beginning with Dyalog version 19.0. For earlier versions of Dyalog, refer to the Tatin website for instructions on installing the Tatin client.