notes-computer-programming-programmingLanguageDesign-concurrency

what's the difference between Actors and CSP?

" Everything I described so far is common to CSP (Communicating Sequential Processes) and the Actor model. Here’s what makes actors more general:

Connections between actors are dynamic. Unlike processes in CSP, actors may establish communication channels dynamically. They may pass messages containing references to actors (or mailboxes). They can then send messages to those actors. Here’s a Scala example:

receive { case (name: String, actor: Actor) => actor ! lookup(name) }

The original message is a tuple combining a string and an actor object. The receiver sends the result of lookup(name) to the actor it has just learned about. Thus a new communication channel between the receiver and the unknown actor can be established at runtime. (In Kilim the same is possible by passing mailboxes via messages.) " -- http://bartoszmilewski.com/2009/07/16/on-actors-and-casting/

(! is the 'send message' primitive)