Determining socket status

kardster has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a client/server using sockets with the following scenario:

server opens a listen socket
client opens the socket
server accepts
server forks child:
    loop
      server sends data to new socket
    while socket is active
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The problem I have is that the server never reads the client so I don't know if the socket is dead. Any pointers on how to determine whether my socket is dead or not?

I'm using ActivePerl on Windows NT. I am using Socket, not IO::Socket.

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Re: Determining socket status by merlyn (Sage) on Mar 09, 2001 at 22:35 UTC
If the socket is dead, then I/O will fail. Check the response from your I/O. (Yes, this is one of the few times when "print blah blah or whatever" actually makes sense.) If you want to poll without I/O, then consider a simple query, like `getpeeraddr()`, which will fail if the socket isn't alive. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply]
Re: Determining socket status by mikfire (Deacon) on Mar 10, 2001 at 00:08 UTC
While merlyn's advice will likely be more sage than mine, this is one of the few times where I have found eof() to useful in a perl program. mikfire	[reply]