[Python-Dev] sock.close() not closing?

[Amaury Forgeot d'Arc]

Hello,

2008/5/7 Sjoerd Mullender <sjoerd at acm.org>:
> Why does sock.close() not actually close sock?
>
>  If I run the code
>
>  import socket
>  sock = socket.socket()
>  ...
>  sock.close()
>
>  I would expect that a system call is done to actually close the socket and
> free the file descriptor.  But that does not happen.  Look at the code in
> socket.py.  It merely replaces the socket instance with a dummy instance so
> that all subsequent calls on the sock object fail, but it does nothing else!

It does close the socket:

In socket.py, when self._sock is replaced, its __del__ method will be called.
This __del__ is implemented in C, in socketmodule.c:

static void
sock_dealloc(PySocketSockObject *s)
{
	if (s->sock_fd != -1)
		(void) SOCKETCLOSE(s->sock_fd);
	Py_TYPE(s)->tp_free((PyObject *)s);
}


Of course, if you call sock.dup() or sock.makefile(),
there is another reference to the underlying _sock, and you must
close() all these objects.

-- 
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc