I liked this question, because it seems like it is a useful feature to have....broadcasting to all threads. I was hoping one of the experts would have handed us an answer, but not yet. :-) So I hacked on it for awhile, and narrowed it down to a problem where a global array is really not global. So the code below is where I left it, I hit a road block. Basically I made a "msg" sub, that when any thread typed "msg somestring" it should be broadcast to the other threads.

Well I did get some limited success, where if the message was sent from the last thread created, it would send it to all threads, because the copy of @clients it gets is the only one which contain all the previous clients. I tried it a second way, getting all threads with threads->list, but was getting an error when I tried to print to them, "Not a glob reference.....". :-(

So what I was doing to test my code was start the main server, then start 3 xterms and telneting in from each of them with "telnet 127.0.01 1337". And if I typed "msg 333333333" from the last created xterm, it would broadcast. But xterms of an earlier creation would not write to xterms of later creation. I tried refering to @clients as "main::@clients" but no-good. 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use threads;
use IO::Socket::INET;
use Data::Dumper;

$| ++;

my $listener = IO::Socket::INET->new
(
LocalPort => 1337,
Listen    => 5,
Reuse     => 1
) || die "Cannot create socket\n";

warn "server up and ready for connections...... \n";

our $hold;
our $client;
our $m = 2;
my $client_num = 0;
our @clients; #seems global, but isn't 
my $broadcastmessage;

while (1){
our $client = $listener->accept;
threads->create(\&start_thread, $client, ++$client_num);
push(@clients,$client);
print Dumper([@clients]),"\n";
}

sub start_thread{
our $st = 100;
our $hp = 100;
my ($client, $client_num) = @_;
push(@clients,$client);
print "thread created for client $client_num\n";
print $client "\t\t\t******   ******   ********\n\r";
print $client "\t\t\t*     *  *    *   *\n\r";
print $client "\t\t\t*     *  *    *   *\n\r";
print $client "\t\t\t******   *    *   *  *****\n\r";
print $client "\t\t\t*        *    *   *      *\n\r";
print $client "\t\t\t*      # ****** # ******** #\n\r";
print $client "Welcome to the POG Test server!\n\r";
print $client "you will be know as player  $client_num\n\r";
print $client "type : HELP for list of commands\n\r";
&begin;
return;
}

sub begin{
while(our $line = <$client>){
print $line;
if($line =~ /slp/i){&slp;}
if($line =~ /med/i){&med;}
if($line =~ /kik/i){&kik;}
if($line =~ /help/i){&help;}
if($line =~ /wke/i){&wke;}
if($line =~ /hp/i){&hp;}
if($line =~ /pun/i){&pun;}
if($line =~ /st/i){&st;}
if($line =~ /msg/i){&msg($line);}
}
}

sub hp{
if (our $m eq 1){
print $client "you are     sleeping/meditating.\n\r";
&begin;
}
print $client "your health is: ";
print $client our $hp;
print $client "\n\r";
}

sub st{
if (our $m eq 1){
print $client "you are sleeping/meditating.\n\r";
&begin;
}
print $client "you stamina is: ";
print $client our $st;
print $client "\n\r";
}

sub slp{
if (our $m eq 1){
print $client "you are already      sleeping/meditating.\n\r";
&begin;
}
our $time = time;
our $m = 1;
print $client "you fall into a deep slumber.....\n\r";
&begin;
}
sub med{
if (our $m eq 1){
print $client "you are already         sleeping/meditating.\n\r";
&begin;
}
our $time = time;
our $m = 1;
print $client "you sit down cross-legged on the floor and press your p
+alms together, you s
&begin;
}

sub wke{
if (our $m eq 2){
print $client "you are already awake\n\r";
&begin;
}
our $time2 = time;
our $check = our $time2 - our $time;
our $hp = $hp + $check;
our $m = 2;
print $client "you wake up from your deep sleep, feeling very refreshe
+d!\n\r";
&begin;
}

sub kik{
if (our $m eq 1){
print $client "you are         sleeping/meditating.\n\r";
&begin;
}
print $client "You kick yourself in the shin, and loose 10 HP\n\r";
our $hp = $hp - 10;
if(our $hp < 1)
{
print "$client_num has died......\n\r";
print $client "$client_num has died......\n\r";
&start_thread;
}
&begin;
}

sub pun{
if (our $m eq 1){
print $client "you are sleeping/meditating.\n\r";
&begin;
}
print $client "You punch yourself in the face,         and loose 10 HP
+\n\r";
our $hp = $hp - 10;
if(our $hp < 1){
print "$client_num has died......\n\r";
print $client "$client_num has died......\n\r";
&start_thread;
}
&begin;
}

sub help{
print $client         "***********************************************
+********************
print $client "MED  = Allows you to begin meditating, which regains st
+amina
print $client "SLP  = Allows you to sleep, which regains health
print $client "WKE  = Wakes you up from sleeping or meditation
print $client "KIK  = Preforms a kick at the first         living thin
+g you see
print $client "HELP = brings you back to this menu
print $client "HP   = prints your Health
print $client "PUN  = preforms a punch at the first living thing you s
+ee
print $client "ST   = Prints your stamina
print $client "*******************************************************
+********************
&begin;
}

sub msg{

$broadcastmessage = shift;
   my $tid = threads->tid;
    print "caller->  $tid\n";

#works but only from last thread created 
#can't figure out how to make @clients truly global   
 print "@clients\n";
  foreach my $client (@clients){
        print $client "$broadcastmessage\n";
      }

#gives all the threads, but gives error 
# "Not a glob reference when tryint ot print to it 
#my @list = threads->list; 
# print "list-> @list\n"; 
#   foreach my $clientz (@list){ 
#       my $tid = $clientz->tid,"\n"; 
#       my $client = threads->object($tid); 
#       print $client "$broadcastmessage\n"; 
#      } 

return;
}

[download]

In reply to Re: writing to all threads by zentara
in thread writing to all threads by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.