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Comment by lostmsu | Hacker News Reader

Can I call foo from main and expect, that by the time program completes, info is logged? If not, I agree with GP - that is a very bad design.

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No, you can't, not without knowing what is inside of bar().

bar() could contain an infinite loop. bar() could call rand() and try to reference the null pointer 1 in n times. bar() could issue forth nasal demons to haunt you. bar() could call os.exit. bar() could recurse until the stack is exhausted. bar() could suspend and not resume. The OS could kill bar() from outside before it returns.

Who knows what shadows lurk within a function's stack frame?

Run it and find out.

The invariant which needs to be preserved here is that if bar() returns, the log will print, and equally important, if bar does not return, the log will not print.

That's what a good async system can preserve without knowing what's inside bar.

OK, maybe I need to rephrase my question: if I do this in main, am I guaranteed to have "main" printed after "foo() is finished"

    foo();
    std.log.info("main", .{});

I would consider that necessary, but not sufficient, to call a particular async system "good", yes.

That's how it works in Zig. Calling an async function like this will also await it.

Could you share an example? I thought async functions weren't callable outside an `async` invocation from the `Inline` calling convention.

Within main(), your snippet will give you an error at compile time "function with calling convention 'Inline' cannot be async". In my snippet foo() is invoked in an async context using the async keyword, and when foo() suspends (due to it awaiting bar()) control will be returned to main(). If you change your first line from

  foo();

  _ = async foo();

Then your program will compile and your log is not going to be prevented by Zig's async shenanigans.

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