Patched python:
Python 2.3a0 (#29, Sep 19 2002, 12:38:34) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
import select select.select([], [], [], 10) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? select.error: (10093, 'Either the application has not called WSAStartup, or WSAStartup failed') import socket select.select([], [], [], 10) Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in ? select.error: (10022, 'An invalid argument was supplied')
Hm... I can confirm this on my Win98SE box. But questions pop up:
Why is the error different the first time? And why is this an error at all?
The winsock library is not initialized the first time - it seems that socketmodule calls WSAStartup(), but I haven't looked at this in detail. Also I think it's not worth to fix it, there's no use for select() on windows if you don't use sockets - you have to supply at least one socket descriptor (that's the cause for the second error above). Although it could be argued whether it makes sense to simulate a Linux-compatible select for Windows.
On Linux, this is not an error. (In fact, time.sleep() uses this to sleep using subsecond precision.)