[moody__]

I was not treating "asynchronous state machine" as a noun, even if taken as a generic adjective it doesn't make sense in this context. What "other things" is this wc2.c doing while the state machine is churning? There is no multi threading or multi processing going on here. So I find it hard to believe that this use of "asynchronous" is inside of what I would generally see it used as. As such I thought perhaps it referred to a specific methodology for designing the code, something akin to how the "lock free" adjective implies a certain design sensibility.

[rhelz]

// What "other things" is this wc2.c doing...

AFAICT, wc2.c isn't written to be an asynchronous state machine. It doesn't ever seem to transfer the control to any other place.

// So I find it hard to believe that this use of "asynchronous" is inside of what I would generally see it used as

Yeah, you are legitimately confused. The post talks about asynchronous state machines, but w2c.c isn't an example of that. I'm sure this gave you a severe case of WTF?!??

// thought perhaps it referred to a specific methodology for designing the code

It does---that's exactly what it is, a programming methodolog, or perhaps better put, a design pattern. But w2c.c isn't an example of code written using that methodology. Again, you are legitimately confused here, because the post talks about something and w2c.c isn't that.

Do you know python? If you google for "asynchronous programming in python" you'll get all kinds of blog posts and youtube videos which explain the technique.

[moody__]

Why would the author of this repository make "wc2 - asynchronous state machine parsing" his header of his README if indeed wc2 was not by his own definition an "asynchronous state machine"? I ask you to consider what is more likely: that your blanket definition of asynchronous is incorrect as applied here or the author is just fucking with us by adding random words as the description of his project.

[partialzero]

Indeed this is very confusing! The program implements a pretty standard state machine (ok), but there is nothing apparently async here. The auth alludes to combining the state machine with async IO in this paper (https://github.com/angea/pocorgtfo/blob/master/contents/arti...), but this implementation is just using fread to (synchronously) read a chunk of bytes.

Furthermore, given disk caching and memory mapping, I'm not convinced async IO would really be that astonishingly different, as individual reads are going to be amortized over pretty much the same bulk reads that the sample program is doing.

As the author says themselves, it seems the main win is hand implementing the incremental utf8 parsing instead of calling a library/os function.

[rhelz]

> I ask you to consider what is more likely: that your blanket definition of asynchronous is incorrect as applied here or the author is just [elided] with us by adding random words

LMAO!!! Well, when you put it that way, I can't blame you for not believing me. Your skeptical mindset will no doubt serve you well in this era of deep fakes and AI hallucinations.

Alas, it is also an example of how this skepticism, however necessary, is going to slow down the sharing of information :-( Its the price we're going to pay for so much lying and such a breech of the social contract.

I assure you, however, w2c.c is not asynchronous. It would be nice if the author could step in here and clarify, because it is hella confusing.

I don't believe the author is Effing with us either--documentation and comments are not automatically synced with the code they describe, so its easy for them to drift apart. Perhaps the author is intending to implement asynchronous features in the future, or perhaps he changed his goals between when he wrote the README and when he wrote the code.

[rhelz]

You'll have to ask him.