Read from a channel or timeout?

Question

With Rust 1.9, I'd like to read from a mpsc::channel or timeout. Is there a clear idiom to make this work? I've seen the unstable approach described in mpsc::Select but this Github discussion suggests it is not a robust approach. Is there a better-recommended way for me to achieve receive-or-timeout semantics?

Answer 1

I don't know how you'd do it with the standard library channels, but the chan crate provides a chan_select! macro:

#[macro_use]
extern crate chan;

use std::time::Duration;

fn main() {
    let (_never_sends, never_receives) = chan::sync::<bool>(1);
    let timeout = chan::after(Duration::from_millis(50));

    chan_select! {
        timeout.recv() => {
            println!("timed out!");
        },
        never_receives.recv() => {
            println!("Shouldn't have a value!");
        },
    }
}