# Coroutines¶

Coroutines are a computer science building block. From a users perspective they form a way to let code in different words communicate with each other. Thus coroutines can be seen as a simple way to multitask.

The key command is co:

: co r> r> swap >r >r ;


## Producer/Consumer¶

A producer generates data which a consumer deals with. The example simply generates sequence of numbers which are printed to the terminal. The sequence ends when a value of 10 is reached.

: producer ( n -- n' n' ) begin 1+ dup co again ;
: consumer
0 producer
begin dup . 10 < while co repeat
r> drop drop ;


The producer is quite simple. It is an endless loop that increases the TOS element, duplicates it and calls the partner. It creates a potentially endless stream of increasing numbers on the stack. For every new number, the other process (the consumer) is called via co to ... consume this number.

> consumer
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ok
>


The consumer has a little more to do. It is responsible to initially call the producer and to clean up after finishing.

## Ceavats¶

Since there is dark stack magic in place, a construct like

: producer ( n -- n' n' ) begin 1+ dup co again ;
: consumer  begin dup . 10 < while co repeat ;
: runit 0 producer consumer r> drop drop ;


wont work. For such code, the co command needs to go deeper into the return stack.

For the same reason calls to CO inside DO-loops wont work. This is due to the loop parameters on the return stack.