Boost.Asio C++ Network Programming - Second Edition

Giving some work to the I/O service

Now, it is time for us to give some work to the io_service object. Knowing more about boost::bind and boost::mutex will help us to give the io_service object work to do. There are two member functions in the io_service object: the post() and dispatch() functions, which we will frequently use to do this. The post() function is used to request the io_service object to run the io_service object's work after we queue up all the work, so it does not allow us to run the work immediately. While the dispatch() function is also used to make a request to the io_service object to run the io_service object's work, but it will execute the work right away without queuing it up.

Using the post() function

Let's examine the