[Python-Dev] socket timeouts fail w/ makefile()

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> I discovered much to my chagrin today that the socket module's new
    >> timeout capability doesn't play well with file objects as returned by
    >> a socket's makefile method.

    Guido> Can you explain better how it doesn't work?

When the socket is in non-blocking mode, reads on the file returned by
.makefile() will fail with an IOError if there is nothing to return.

    >> I would think the greatest use of timeouts would be using
    >> higher-level line-oriented modules like urllib and ftplib.  In
    >> addition, since makefile() isn't always available, it seems
    >> worthwhile to implement something in socket.py, thus making
    >> makefile() universally available.

    Guido> Um, when is makefile() not available?  

I don't know.  I was going by the doc string in socketmodule.c which says,
in part:

    ...
    makefile([mode, [bufsize]]) -- return a file object for the socket [*]\n\
    ...
     [*] not available on all platforms!");

Maybe the docs are just wrong.  According to the #ifdef in the code, if
NO_DUP is defined (OS/2, Windows, BeOS), makefile() isn't.

    Guido> There's code for Windows that emulates it, returning a file-like
    Guido> object.  Maybe that code should be enabled universally rather
    Guido> than only on Windows...

That sounds similar to what is in timeoutsocket.py.  It would have the
advantage of providing identical semantics across all platforms.

Skip