alertable

From alert +‎ -able.

alertable (not comparable)

1. (programming) Capable of receiving and responding to notifications from other threads of execution.
   • 2000, Jeffrey Richter, Jason D. Clark, Programming Server-side Applications for Microsoft Windows 2000:

     Since your thread is in an alertable state, as soon as an APC entry appears, the system wakes your thread and empties the queue (by calling the callback routines).

   • 2008, Joe Duffy, Concurrent Programming on Windows:

     If you know the HANDLE of a thread you wish to signal, and that thread has performed an alertable wait, then queueing an APC is often significantly quicker than waking the target thread by using kernel objects (as we are about to review).

   • 2012, Michael Sikorski, Andrew Honig, Practical Malware Analysis:

     Every thread has a queue of APCs attached to it, and these are processed when the thread is in an alertable state, such as when they call functions like WaitForSingleObjectEx, WaitForMultipleObjectsEx, and Sleep.

2. (bridge) Requiring the partner of the person making a bid to alert the opponents that the bid's meaning involves a partnership understanding that is not readily understood.
   • 1991, Albert Hodges Morehead, Edmond Hoyle, The New Complete Hoyle, page 165:

     Bids marked in red on the convention card must be alerted. Cue-bids of an opponent's suit, however, are not alertable.

   • 1994, Audrey Grant, The Spade Series: An Introduction to Duplicate Bridge, page 165:

     ln general, natural bids are not Alertable.

   • 2009, Jean J. Reaves, Conventional Wisdom Plus: A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Bridge Conventions:

     To alert those calls you may use the alert card in the bidding box or simply say "alert" when partner makes an alertable call.

3. Able to respond constructively to being alerted.
   • 1952, Truman Nelson, The Sin of the Prophet, page 48:

     The whole party, with the concentration of legal ammunition, the relaxed but alertable force of the deputies, weighed heavily against the slight presence of Mr. Grimes sitting beyond the pale, on the silent side of the bar.

   • 1973, Equilibrium - Volume 1, page 35:

     Those members of our society who are alertable now know that there are serious global problems of environmental deterioration and resource depletion.

   • 1994, AnnMari Jansson, Monica Hammer, Carl Folke, Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics, page 41:

     To put it bluntly, many of those who are alertable to the nonsensical environmental assumptions of economic theory are alerted by now, and major efforts to inform the remaining economists about the facts of life (Daily et al. 1991; daly and Cobb 1989; Ehrlich 1989; Ehrlich et al. 1992; Klaassen and Opschoo 1991; Perrings 1987; Victor 1991) seem unlikely to be very cost-effective.

• Albert Lea, alterable, relatable