provides a simple actor framework Actors get a pipe and arguments from caller Create a new actor passing arbitrary arguments reference. Destroy an actor. Send a zmsg message to the actor, take ownership of the message and destroy when it has been sent. Receive a zmsg message from the actor. Returns NULL if the actor was interrupted before the message could be received, or if there was a timeout on the actor. Probe the supplied object, and report if it looks like a zactor_t. Probe the supplied reference. If it looks like a zactor_t instance, return the underlying libzmq actor handle; else if it looks like a libzmq actor handle, return the supplied value. Return the actor's zsock handle. Use this when you absolutely need to work with the zsock instance rather than the actor.