Chapter 7
Extending Rinda

Most of the functionality you’ve seen so far has been ported from Linda. In this chapter, I’ll introduce features that didn’t exist in Linda’s original conception but that I later added. You’ll learn about some unique features and a unique way of using Rinda.

These include additional library features, such as adding expiration on a tuple, notifying newly added or deleted tuples, and expressing a tuple in a Hash. I added these features because I needed them while developing applications with Rinda. (I assume Linda doesn’t have these extended features, because the author of Linda designed the minimum API that can comply with various applications. I hope that my extensions aren’t diluting Linda’s original design policy.)

However, the more I used Rinda in actual applications, the more features I thought I needed. For example, I had to handle situations where some application bugs left obsolete tuples. I wanted to be notified when other applications added or deleted tuples in the tuplespace. Expressing a tuple in a Hash may be more suitable than expressing it in an Array. And a naming server could be useful, too...and so on.