[igraph] igraph/C: is there a facility for interrupting computations?

[Szabolcs Horvát]

Dear All,

Does the C interface to igraph have any facility for
aborting/interrupting computations that take very long?

I assume it does because interrupting is possible with igraph/R.  E.g.
the following takes a long time:

rewire(erdos.renyi.game(1000, 0.5, 'gnp'), keeping_degseq(niter=10000000))

But pressing the stop button in R cancels it without killing the R session.

How is this implemented?

So far I tried setting a status handler as follows:

int igStatusHandler(const char *, void *) { return IGRAPH_INTERRUPTED; }

igraph_set_status_handler(igStatusHandler);

But igraph_rewire() still runs to the finish without interruption.

Use case: I am working on a (partial) Mathematica interface and the
ability to interrupt would be a big usability improvement.  I was
using igraph through the R interface from Mathematica before
(https://github.com/szhorvat/IGraphR) but that has its limitations.

Szabolcs