I’m working on a project where I need to handle file operations without blocking the main thread. The problem is that traditional file APIs block execution when opening files or getting file statistics, which causes performance issues in my application.
I’ve been trying to find a way to make these operations asynchronous so my program can continue running other tasks while waiting for file operations to complete. This is especially important when dealing with large files or slow storage devices.
Does anyone know how to implement non-blocking file opening and stat operations? I’m looking for solutions that can handle multiple file operations concurrently without freezing the user interface or stopping other processes from running.
event-driven programming is great for async file ops. try callbacks or promises in js or python asyncio. you start the file operation, set a callback for when it finishes, and your app keeps working on other stuff. best way to handle lots of files without freezing up.
Async features are key for non-blocking file operations. I’ve been using Node.js’s ‘fs’ module lately - specifically ‘fs.promises.readFile’ and ‘fs.promises.stat’. These let your app keep running while file operations happen in the background. I also use ‘async/await’ syntax since it makes the code cleaner and easier to read. You can handle multiple file operations at once this way, which keeps your app responsive.
Thread pools are perfect for this. I set up async file operations with a worker thread pool that handles all the blocking I/O away from the main thread. The main thread just sends requests to workers and gets callbacks when they’re done. You can queue tons of file operations at once without freezing your UI or main logic. C++ with thread pools or Python’s concurrent.futures makes this pretty easy. Just size your thread pool based on workload and what your system can handle.