Tkpvm Commands

The following commands are currently implemented.

• addhost
• bind
• conf (new in version 1.1)
• delhost
• dialog
• halt
• id (obsolete, use "tid" instead)
• joingroup
• kill
• leavegroup
• parent
• patchlevel
• recv
• reset
• send
• spawn
• tasks
• term
• tid
• version

Data types

• Any string that is a sequence of digits from 0..9 will be converted automatically to an integer. Octal and Hexadecimal representations as in the C language (preceded by "0" resp. "0x") are accepted too.
• If the string is in a valid floating point representation, containing al least a dot "." or the character "e", it will be converted to a double.
• All other strings are not converted. Strings not preceded by a format specifier cannot start with "-[a-z]" ([a-z] means any lowercase character from 'a' to 'z'), because then the string will be treated as format specifier.

-char

Character

-byte

Byte (0..255)

-short

Short integer (usually -32768 .. 32767)

-int

Integer (usually -2147483648 .. 2147483647)

-long

Long integer (usually the same as integer)

-tid

Task identifier (the same as integer)

-float

Floating point

-double

Double floating point

-string

A string, always sent as an integer (The number of characters, including the final '\0'), followed by the bytes. You can read a byte array (see later) as if it is a string. If it doesn't end with '\0', a '\0' will automatically be appended to it.

-xxxx()

Any of the above followed by "()" means that the next argument is treated as a list, which is sent as an array. In PVM, an array is always sent as an integer (the number of elements), followed by the elements. For a byte array, the second argument is treated as a string.

-xxxx(number)

The next argument is treated as a list. The first number elements of this list are sent (not preceded by an integer!!!!). Except xxxx(1) is the same as xxxx. If the list has more elements, it will be truncated, if there are less than number, zero elements are appended. (0 for integers, "0.0" for floats and doubles, "" for strings, '\0' for characters).

send tid/group msgtag -float 5.4 -double() {3.14 2.17}

Send a float (5.4), an integer (2) and two doubles (3.14 and 2.17)

send tid/group msgtag -int 5 -byte(7) "abcdefghijkl"

Send an integer (5) and 7 bytes (abcdefg) (The string is truncated)

send tid/group msgtag -string "hello" -byte() "hello"

Send an integer (6) followed by 6 bytes ("hello\0"), and another integer (5) followed by 5 bytes ("hello").

Task identifiers

Message tags

SYNOPSIS

addhost hostname ?hostname .....?

DESCRIPTION

Add hosts to the virtual machine.

SYNOPSIS

bind tid msgtag ?command?
bind tid any ?command?
bind tid kill ?command?

DESCRIPTION

Bind the given command to the given tid/msgtag combination. Any time later when data is received through Pvm, the command wil be executed. The keyword 'any' matches any tid or msgtag, but not the keyword kill. kill can be used to execute any command as soon as the process tid is killed.

During execution of command, only data that matches tid and msgtag can be received, So the recv command doesn't need to specify it any more. Inside the command there are 3 macro's that can be used to find out additional information about the received data:

%t

tid

%m

msgtag

%n

total number of bytes received.

This is usefull if tid ormsgtag (or both) have the value any.

If command is the empty string, the binding is deleted. If the command is missing, the currently bound command is returned.

SYNOPSIS

conf

DESCRIPTION

Gives a list of all hosts in the pvm virtual machine. Each element of the list has 4 elements: the tid of the daemon, the name and the archtype of the host and, finally, the speed.