[ES2015] Generators

Generators

Generators are functions that can be paused and resumed later. A generator can contain multiple yield statements. At each yield, the generator will pause/resume (while also returning some value). At every restart, a value will be passed in.

Here’s a brief intro to generator functions

With ES6 generators, we have a different kind of function, which may be paused in the middle, one or many times, and resumed later, allowing other code to run during these paused periods.

• They are denoted with a *, e.g. function* foo() {}

1function* foo () {
2  // code goes here
3}

• Both function* foo() {} and function *foo() {} are valid
• They let you pausethe exection of a function. Normal functions can not be interrupted once they start running.. That blocks the thread. JS is single threaded, meaning only one function/command executing at any given time.
• You use yield to pause/resume a function from within itself (can not be paused from outside..)
• A paused function can only be restarted from the outside.
• You get 2-way communication, you send messages out with every yield, and you send messages back in with every restart. Unlike regular function where you take in parameters at the beginning and give out messages once at the end with return

Web Workers are a mechanism where you can spin up a whole separate thread for a part of a JS program to run in, totally in parallel to your main JS program thread. The reason this doesn’t introduce multi-threaded complications into our programs is that the two threads can only communicate with each other through normal async events, which always abide by the event-loop one-at-a-time behavior required by run-to-completion.

• Generator functions produce an iterator instead of running when they are invoked. So we can use a .next() on them
• Using return inside a generator is highly discouraged bad practice. Always yield inside a generator

Links

• The Basics Of ES6 Generators