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closing a server socket

simon place simon_place at whsmithnet.co.uk
Tue Oct 14 17:25:43 EDT 2003 
Peter Hansen wrote:
> simon place wrote:
> 
>>Spent some very frustrating hours recoding to find a way of closing a server
>>socket, i'd not thought it would be any problem,
>>
>>however, after complete failure and as a last resort, i looked at the python
>>wrapper module for sockets, and found that the close command doesn't actually
>>call the underlying close! this didn't seem right, so i added it, and my code
>>now works simply and as expected.
>>
>>        def close(self):
>>                self._sock.close()  # added 2003-oct-13
>>                self._sock = _closedsocket()
>>                self.send = self.recv = self.sendto = self.recvfrom =           self._sock._dummy
>>                close.__doc__ = _realsocket.close.__doc__
>>
>>Probably only on win32, the comments in the socket module seem to indicate
>>different codings on different platforms.
> 
> 
> None of this should be necessary!
> 
> What problems were you having that led you to try the above abomination in
> your effort to resolve them?
> 
> -Peter

The problem is i couldn't find anyway, in 'normal' code, to close a server 
socket, ie unblock an accept.

tried to use non-blocking mode, but not allowed on a server socket, which 
makes sense, but isn't documented.

tried to use time-outs, which was close, but seems to close the accepted 
connection sockets on a server socket time-out.

tried to fire a dummy connection to unblock the accept, which works, but if 
your ip changes, i.e. a dialup, you can't do that.

i only hacked the module because of frustration, but it took about a minute to 
spot, and now every thing works the original way i tried, and i've been doing 
some thrashing and had no problems.
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