Is it possible () + non-blocking write () on a blocking channel or socket?

The situation is that I have a blocking pipe or socket fd that I want to access write()

without blocking, so I do it first select()

, but that still doesn't guarantee that write()

it won't block.

Here's the data I've collected. Even if select()

indicates that writing is possible, writing can more than PIPE_BUF

block bytes. However, writing no more than PIPE_BUF

bytes does not seem to block, but this is not provided by the POSIX spec .

This only indicates the behavior of atoms. The Python documentation (!) States that:

The files that are reported as ready for writing select()

, poll()

or similar interfaces in this module is guaranteed not to be blocked when writing PIPE_BUF

bytes. This value is guaranteed by POSIX as a minimum 512

.

In the following test program, set BUF_BYTES

to tell 100000

to lock write()

on Linux, FreeBSD or Solaris after a successful selection. I'll assume named pipes have similar behavior to anonymous pipes.

Unfortunately, this can happen with socket blocking too. Call test_socket()

in main()

and use is pretty big BUF_BYTES

( 100000

okay here too). It is not clear if there is a safe buffer size, for example PIPE_BUF

for sockets.

#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <limits.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/select.h>
#include <unistd.h>

#define BUF_BYTES PIPE_BUF
char buf[BUF_BYTES];

int
probe_with_select(int nfds, fd_set *readfds, fd_set *writefds,
                  fd_set *exceptfds)
{
    struct timeval timeout = {0, 0};
    int n_found = select(nfds, readfds, writefds, exceptfds, &timeout);
    if (n_found == -1) {
        perror("select");
    }
    return n_found;
}

void
check_if_readable(int fd)
{
    fd_set fdset;
    FD_ZERO(&fdset);
    FD_SET(fd, &fdset);
    printf("select() for read on fd %d returned %d\n",
           fd, probe_with_select(fd + 1, &fdset, 0, 0));
}

void
check_if_writable(int fd)
{
    fd_set fdset;
    FD_ZERO(&fdset);
    FD_SET(fd, &fdset);
    int n_found = probe_with_select(fd + 1, 0, &fdset, 0);
    printf("select() for write on fd %d returned %d\n", fd, n_found);
    /* if (n_found == 0) { */
    /*     printf("sleeping\n"); */
    /*     sleep(2); */
    /*     int n_found = probe_with_select(fd + 1, 0, &fdset, 0); */
    /*     printf("retried select() for write on fd %d returned %d\n",  */
    /*            fd, n_found); */
    /* } */
}

void
test_pipe(void)
{
    int pipe_fds[2];
    size_t written;
    int i;
    if (pipe(pipe_fds)) {
        perror("pipe failed");
        _exit(1);
    }
    printf("read side pipe fd: %d\n", pipe_fds[0]);
    printf("write side pipe fd: %d\n", pipe_fds[1]);
    for (i = 0; ; i++) {
        printf("i = %d\n", i);
        check_if_readable(pipe_fds[0]);
        check_if_writable(pipe_fds[1]);
        written = write(pipe_fds[1], buf, BUF_BYTES);
        if (written == -1) {
            perror("write");
            _exit(-1);
        }
        printf("written %d bytes\n", written);
    }
}

void
serve()
{
    int listenfd = 0, connfd = 0;
    struct sockaddr_in serv_addr;

    listenfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
    memset(&serv_addr, '0', sizeof(serv_addr));

    serv_addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
    serv_addr.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
    serv_addr.sin_port = htons(5000);

    bind(listenfd, (struct sockaddr*)&serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr));

    listen(listenfd, 10);

    connfd = accept(listenfd, (struct sockaddr*)NULL, NULL);

    sleep(10);
}

int
connect_to_server()
{
    int sockfd = 0, n = 0;
    struct sockaddr_in serv_addr;

    if((sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0)) < 0) {
        perror("socket");
        exit(-1);
    }

    memset(&serv_addr, '0', sizeof(serv_addr));

    serv_addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
    serv_addr.sin_port = htons(5000);

    if(inet_pton(AF_INET, "127.0.0.1", &serv_addr.sin_addr) <= 0) {
        perror("inet_pton");
        exit(-1);
    }

    if (connect(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&serv_addr, sizeof(serv_addr)) < 0) {
        perror("connect");
        exit(-1);
    }

    return sockfd;
}

void
test_socket(void)
{
    if (fork() == 0)  {
        serve();
    } else {
        int fd;
        int i;
        int written;
        sleep(1);
        fd = connect_to_server();

        for (i = 0; ; i++) {
            printf("i = %d\n", i);
            check_if_readable(fd);
            check_if_writable(fd);
            written = write(fd, buf, BUF_BYTES);
            if (written == -1) {
                perror("write");
                _exit(-1);
            }
            printf("written %d bytes\n", written);
        }
    }
}

int
main(void)
{
    test_pipe();
    /* test_socket(); */
}