How to close a blocked socket?

[Daniel T.]

The code below fails. Socket.accept blocks inside the thread and doesn't 
let go, even after the socket was closed. From the error presented, the 
socket never actually closes.

I realize that the below is a basic Java idiom but how do you do the 
same thing in Python?

import unittest
import socket
import threading
import time

class SocketAcceptor ( threading.Thread ):
   def __init__( self, socket ):
      threading.Thread.__init__( self )
      self.socket = socket
      
   def run( self ):
      self.socket.bind( ( "", 3423 ) )
      self.socket.listen( 5 )
      child, ip = self.socket.accept()
      
class SocketTester ( unittest.TestCase ):
   def testClose( self ):
      for each in range( 4 ):
         ss = socket.socket()
         acceptor_thread = SocketAcceptor( ss )
         acceptor_thread.start()
         time.sleep( 1 )
         ss.close()
      
if __name__ == '__main__':
   unittest.main()