SELECT_TUT(2) Linux Programmer's Manual SELECT_TUT(2)
NAME
select, pselect, FD_CLR, FD_ISSET, FD_SET, FD_ZERO - synchronous I/O
multiplexing
SYNOPSIS
#include<sys/time.h>
#include<sys/types.h>
#include<unistd.h>
intselect(int nfds,fd_set*readfds,fd_set*writefds,fd_set
*exceptfds,structtimeval*utimeout);
intpselect(int nfds,fd_set*readfds,fd_set*writefds,fd_set
*exceptfds,conststructtimespec*ntimeout,sigset_t*sigmask);
FD_CLR(int fd,fd_set*set);
FD_ISSET(int fd,fd_set*set);
FD_SET(int fd,fd_set*set);
FD_ZERO(fd_set*set);
DESCRIPTION
select (or pselect) is the pivot function of most C programs that han-
dle more than one simultaneous file descriptor (or socket handle) in an
efficient manner. Its principal arguments are three arrays of file
descriptors: readfds, writefds, and exceptfds. The way that select is
usually used is to block while waiting for a "change of status" on one
or more of the file descriptors. A "change of status" is when more
characters become available from the file descriptor, or when space
becomes available within the kernel's internal buffers for more to be
written to the file descriptor, or when a file descriptor goes into
error (in the case of a socket or pipe this is when the other end of
the connection is closed).
In summary, select just watches multiple file descriptors, and is the
standard Unix call to do so.
The arrays of file descriptors are called file descriptor sets. Each
set is declared as type fd_set, and its contents can be altered with
the macros FD_CLR, FD_ISSET, FD_SET, and FD_ZERO. FD_ZERO is usually
the first function to be used on a newly declared set. Thereafter, the
individual file descriptors that you are interested in can be added one
by one with FD_SET. select modifies the contents of the sets according
to the rules described below; after calling select you can test if your
file descriptor is still present in the set with the FD_ISSET macro.
FD_ISSET returns non-zero if the descriptor is present and zero if it
is not. FD_CLR removes a file descriptor from the set although I can't
see the use for it in a clean program.
ARGUMENTS
readfds
This set is watched to see if data is available for reading from
any of its file descriptors. After select has returned, readfds
will be cleared of all file descriptors except for those file
descriptors that are immediately available for reading with a
recv() (for sockets) or read() (for pipes, files, and sockets)
call.
writefds
This set is watched to see if there is space to write data to
any of its file descriptor. After select has returned, writefds
will be cleared of all file descriptors except for those file
descriptors that are immediately available for writing with a
send() (for sockets) or write() (for pipes, files, and sockets)
call.
exceptfds
This set is watched for exceptions or errors on any of the file
descriptors. However, that is actually just a rumor. How you use
exceptfds is to watch for out-of-band (OOB) data. OOB data is
data sent on a socket using the MSG_OOB flag, and hence
exceptfds only really applies to sockets. See recv(2) and
send(2) about this. After select has returned, exceptfds will be
cleared of all file descriptors except for those descriptors
that are available for reading OOB data. You can only ever read
one byte of OOB data though (which is done with recv()), and
writing OOB data (done with send) can be done at any time and
will not block. Hence there is no need for a fourth set to check
if a socket is available for writing OOB data.
nfds This is an integer one more than the maximum of any file
descriptor in any of the sets. In other words, while you are
busy adding file descriptors to your sets, you must calculate
the maximum integer value of all of them, then increment this
value by one, and then pass this as nfds to select.
utimeout
This is the longest time select must wait before returning, even
if nothing interesting happened. If this value is passed as
NULL, then select blocks indefinitely waiting for an event.
utimeout can be set to zero seconds, which causes select to
return immediately. The structure structtimeval is defined as,
struct timeval {
time_t tv_sec; /* seconds */
long tv_usec; /* microseconds */
};
ntimeout
This argument has the same meaning as utimeout but structtime-
spec has nanosecond precision as follows,
struct timespec {
long tv_sec; /* seconds */
long tv_nsec; /* nanoseconds */
};
sigmask
This argument holds a set of signals to allow while performing a
pselect call (see sigaddset(3) and sigprocmask(2)). It can be
passed as NULL, in which case it does not modify the set of
allowed signals on entry and exit to the function. It will then
behave just like select.
COMBININGSIGNALANDDATAEVENTS
pselect must be used if you are waiting for a signal as well as data
from a file descriptor. Programs that receive signals as events nor-
mally use the signal handler only to raise a global flag. The global
flag will indicate that the event must be processed in the main loop of
the program. A signal will cause the select (or pselect) call to return
with errno set to EINTR. This behavior is essential so that signals can
be processed in the main loop of the program, otherwise select would
block indefinitely. Now, somewhere in the main loop will be a condi-
tional to check the global flag. So we must ask: what if a signal
arrives after the conditional, but before the select call? The answer
is that select would block indefinitely, even though an event is actu-
ally pending. This race condition is solved by the pselect call. This
call can be used to mask out signals that are not to be received except
within the pselect call. For instance, let us say that the event in
question was the exit of a child process. Before the start of the main
loop, we would block SIGCHLD using sigprocmask. Our pselect call would
enable SIGCHLD by using the virgin signal mask. Our program would look
like:
int child_events = 0;
void child_sig_handler (int x) {
child_events++;
signal (SIGCHLD, child_sig_handler);
}
int main (int argc, char **argv) {
sigset_t sigmask, orig_sigmask;
sigemptyset (&sigmask);
sigaddset (&sigmask, SIGCHLD);
sigprocmask (SIG_BLOCK, &sigmask,
&orig_sigmask);
signal (SIGCHLD, child_sig_handler);
for (;;) { /* main loop */
for (; child_events > 0; child_events--) {
/* do event work here */
}
r = pselect (nfds, &rd, &wr, &er, 0, &orig_sigmask);
/* main body of program */
}
}
Note that the above pselect call can be replaced with:
sigprocmask (SIG_BLOCK, &orig_sigmask, 0);
r = select (nfds, &rd, &wr, &er, 0);
sigprocmask (SIG_BLOCK, &sigmask, 0);
but then there is still the possibility that a signal could arrive
after the first sigprocmask and before the select. If you do do this,
it is prudent to at least put a finite timeout so that the process does
not block. At present glibc probably works this way. The Linux kernel
does not have a native pselect system call as yet so this is all proba-
bly much of a mute point.
PRACTICAL
So what is the point of select? Can't I just read and write to my
descriptors whenever I want? The point of select is that it watches
multiple descriptors at the same time and properly puts the process to
sleep if there is no activity. It does this while enabling you to han-
dle multiple simultaneous pipes and sockets. Unix programmers often
find themselves in a position where they have to handle IO from more
than one file descriptor where the data flow may be intermittent. If
you were to merely create a sequence of read and write calls, you would
find that one of your calls may block waiting for data from/to a file
descriptor, while another file descriptor is unused though available
for data. select efficiently copes with this situation.
A classic example of select comes from the select man page:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int
main(void) {
fd_set rfds;
struct timeval tv;
int retval;
/* Watch stdin (fd 0) to see when it has input. */
FD_ZERO(&rfds);
FD_SET(0, &rfds);
/* Wait up to five seconds. */
tv.tv_sec = 5;
tv.tv_usec = 0;
retval = select(1, &rfds, NULL, NULL, &tv);
/* Don't rely on the value of tv now! */
if (retval)
printf("Data is available now.\n");
/* FD_ISSET(0, &rfds) will be true. */
else
printf("No data within five seconds.\n");
exit(0);
}
PORTFORWARDINGEXAMPLE
Here is an example that better demonstrates the true utility of select.
The listing below a TCP forwarding program that forwards from one TCP
port to another.
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <signal.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
#include <arpa/inet.h>
#include <errno.h>
static int forward_port;
#undef max
#define max(x,y) ((x) > (y) ? (x) : (y))
static int listen_socket (int listen_port) {
struct sockaddr_in a;
int s;
int yes;
if ((s = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0)) < 0) {
perror ("socket");
return -1;
}
yes = 1;
if (setsockopt
(s, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR,
(char *) &yes, sizeof (yes)) < 0) {
perror ("setsockopt");
close (s);
return -1;
}
memset (&a, 0, sizeof (a));
a.sin_port = htons (listen_port);
a.sin_family = AF_INET;
if (bind
(s, (struct sockaddr *) &a, sizeof (a)) < 0) {
perror ("bind");
close (s);
return -1;
}
printf ("accepting connections on port %d\n",
(int) listen_port);
listen (s, 10);
return s;
}
static int connect_socket (int connect_port,
char *address) {
struct sockaddr_in a;
int s;
if ((s = socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0)) < 0) {
perror ("socket");
close (s);
return -1;
}
memset (&a, 0, sizeof (a));
a.sin_port = htons (connect_port);
a.sin_family = AF_INET;
if (!inet_aton
(address,
(struct in_addr *) &a.sin_addr.s_addr)) {
perror ("bad IP address format");
close (s);
return -1;
}
if (connect
(s, (struct sockaddr *) &a,
sizeof (a)) < 0) {
perror ("connect()");
shutdown (s, SHUT_RDWR);
close (s);
return -1;
}
return s;
}
#define SHUT_FD1 { \
if (fd1 >= 0) { \
shutdown (fd1, SHUT_RDWR); \
close (fd1); \
fd1 = -1; \
} \
}
#define SHUT_FD2 { \
if (fd2 >= 0) { \
shutdown (fd2, SHUT_RDWR); \
close (fd2); \
fd2 = -1; \
} \
}
#define BUF_SIZE 1024
int main (int argc, char **argv) {
int h;
int fd1 = -1, fd2 = -1;
char buf1[BUF_SIZE], buf2[BUF_SIZE];
int buf1_avail, buf1_written;
int buf2_avail, buf2_written;
if (argc != 4) {
fprintf (stderr,
"Usage\n\tfwd <listen-port> \
<forward-to-port> <forward-to-ip-address>\n");
exit (1);
}
signal (SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);
forward_port = atoi (argv[2]);
h = listen_socket (atoi (argv[1]));
if (h < 0)
exit (1);
for (;;) {
int r, nfds = 0;
fd_set rd, wr, er;
FD_ZERO (&rd);
FD_ZERO (&wr);
FD_ZERO (&er);
FD_SET (h, &rd);
nfds = max (nfds, h);
if (fd1 > 0 && buf1_avail < BUF_SIZE) {
FD_SET (fd1, &rd);
nfds = max (nfds, fd1);
}
if (fd2 > 0 && buf2_avail < BUF_SIZE) {
FD_SET (fd2, &rd);
nfds = max (nfds, fd2);
}
if (fd1 > 0
&& buf2_avail - buf2_written > 0) {
FD_SET (fd1, &wr);
nfds = max (nfds, fd1);
}
if (fd2 > 0
&& buf1_avail - buf1_written > 0) {
FD_SET (fd2, &wr);
nfds = max (nfds, fd2);
}
if (fd1 > 0) {
FD_SET (fd1, &er);
nfds = max (nfds, fd1);
}
if (fd2 > 0) {
FD_SET (fd2, &er);
nfds = max (nfds, fd2);
}
r = select (nfds + 1, &rd, &wr, &er, NULL);
if (r == -1 && errno == EINTR)
continue;
if (r < 0) {
perror ("select()");
exit (1);
}
if (FD_ISSET (h, &rd)) {
unsigned int l;
struct sockaddr_in client_address;
memset (&client_address, 0, l =
sizeof (client_address));
r = accept (h, (struct sockaddr *)
&client_address, &l);
if (r < 0) {
perror ("accept()");
} else {
SHUT_FD1;
SHUT_FD2;
buf1_avail = buf1_written = 0;
buf2_avail = buf2_written = 0;
fd1 = r;
fd2 =
connect_socket (forward_port,
argv[3]);
if (fd2 < 0) {
SHUT_FD1;
} else
printf ("connect from %s\n",
inet_ntoa
(client_address.sin_addr));
}
}
/* NB: read oob data before normal reads */
if (fd1 > 0)
if (FD_ISSET (fd1, &er)) {
char c;
errno = 0;
r = recv (fd1, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
if (r < 1) {
SHUT_FD1;
} else
send (fd2, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
}
if (fd2 > 0)
if (FD_ISSET (fd2, &er)) {
char c;
errno = 0;
r = recv (fd2, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
if (r < 1) {
SHUT_FD1;
} else
send (fd1, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
}
if (fd1 > 0)
if (FD_ISSET (fd1, &rd)) {
r =
read (fd1, buf1 + buf1_avail,
BUF_SIZE - buf1_avail);
if (r < 1) {
SHUT_FD1;
} else
buf1_avail += r;
}
if (fd2 > 0)
if (FD_ISSET (fd2, &rd)) {
r =
read (fd2, buf2 + buf2_avail,
BUF_SIZE - buf2_avail);
if (r < 1) {
SHUT_FD2;
} else
buf2_avail += r;
}
if (fd1 > 0)
if (FD_ISSET (fd1, &wr)) {
r =
write (fd1,
buf2 + buf2_written,
buf2_avail -
buf2_written);
if (r < 1) {
SHUT_FD1;
} else
buf2_written += r;
}
if (fd2 > 0)
if (FD_ISSET (fd2, &wr)) {
r =
write (fd2,
buf1 + buf1_written,
buf1_avail -
buf1_written);
if (r < 1) {
SHUT_FD2;
} else
buf1_written += r;
}
/* check if write data has caught read data */
if (buf1_written == buf1_avail)
buf1_written = buf1_avail = 0;
if (buf2_written == buf2_avail)
buf2_written = buf2_avail = 0;
/* one side has closed the connection, keep
writing to the other side until empty */
if (fd1 < 0
&& buf1_avail - buf1_written == 0) {
SHUT_FD2;
}
if (fd2 < 0
&& buf2_avail - buf2_written == 0) {
SHUT_FD1;
}
}
return 0;
}
The above program properly forwards most kinds of TCP connections
including OOB signal data transmitted by telnet servers. It handles the
tricky problem of having data flow in both directions simultaneously.
You might think it more efficient to use a fork() call and devote a
thread to each stream. This becomes more tricky than you might suspect.
Another idea is to set non-blocking IO using an ioctl() call. This also
has its problems because you end up having to have inefficient time-
outs.
The program does not handle more than one simultaneous connection at a
time, although it could easily be extended to do this with a linked
list of buffers - one for each connection. At the moment, new connec-
tions cause the current connection to be dropped.
SELECTLAW
Many people who try to use select come across behavior that is diffi-
cult to understand and produces non-portable or borderline results. For
instance, the above program is carefully written not to block at any
point, even though it does not set its file descriptors to non-blocking
mode at all (see ioctl(2)). It is easy to introduce subtle errors that
will remove the advantage of using select, hence I will present a list
of essentials to watch for when using the select call.
1. You should always try use select without a timeout. Your program
should have nothing to do if there is no data available. Code
that depends on timeouts is not usually portable and difficult
to debug.
2. The value nfds must be properly calculated for efficiency as
explained above.
3. No file descriptor must be added to any set if you do not intend
to check its result after the select call, and respond appropri-
ately. See next rule.
4. After select returns, all file descriptors in all sets must be
checked. Any file descriptor that is available for writing must
be written to, and any file descriptor available for reading
must be read, etc.
5. The functions read(), recv(), write(), and send() do not neces-
sarily read/write the full amount of data that you have
requested. If they do read/write the full amount, its because
you have a low traffic load and a fast stream. This is not
always going to be the case. You should cope with the case of
your functions only managing to send or receive a single byte.
6. Never read/write only in single bytes at a time unless your are
really sure that you have a small amount of data to process. It
is extremely inefficient not to read/write as much data as you
can buffer each time. The buffers in the example above are 1024
bytes although they could easily be made as large as the maximum
possible packet size on your local network.
7. The functions read(), recv(), write(), and send() as well as the
select() call can return -1 with an errno of EINTR or EAGAIN
(EWOULDBLOCK) which are not errors. These results must be prop-
erly managed (not done properly above). If your program is not
going to receive any signals then it is unlikely you will get
EINTR. If your program does not set non-blocking IO, you will
not get EAGAIN. Nonetheless you should still cope with these
errors for completeness.
8. Never call read(), recv(), write(), or send() with a buffer
length of zero.
9. Except as indicated in 7., the functions read(), recv(),
write(), and send() never have a return value less than 1 except
if an error has occurred. For instance, a read() on a pipe where
the other end has died returns zero (so does an end-of-file
error), but only returns zero once (a followup read or write
will return -1). Should any of these functions return 0 or -1,
you should not pass that descriptor to select ever again. In the
above example, I close the descriptor immediately, and then set
it to -1 to prevent it being included in a set.
10. The timeout value must be initialized with each new call to
select, since some operating systems modify the structure. pse-
lect however does not modify its timeout structure.
11. I have heard that the Windows socket layer does not cope with
OOB data properly. It also does not cope with select calls when
no file descriptors are set at all. Having no file descriptors
set is a useful way to sleep the process with sub-second preci-
sion by using the timeout. (See further on.)
USLEEPEMULATION
On systems that do not have a usleep function, you can call select with
a finite timeout and no file descriptors as follows:
struct timeval tv;
tv.tv_sec = 0;
tv.tv_usec = 200000; /* 0.2 seconds */
select (0, NULL, NULL, NULL, &tv);
This is only guarenteed to work on Unix systems, however.
RETURNVALUE
On success, select returns the total number of file descriptors still
present in the file descriptor sets.
If select timed out, then the file descriptors sets should be all empty
(but may not be on some systems). However the return value will defi-
nitely be zero.
A return value of -1 indicates an error, with errno being set appropri-
ately. In the case of an error, the returned sets and the timeout
struct contents are undefined and should not be used. pselect however
never modifies ntimeout.
ERRORS
EBADF A set contained an invalid file descriptor. This error often
occurs when you add a file descriptor to a set that you have
already issued a close on, or when that file descriptor has
experienced some kind of error. Hence you should cease adding to
sets any file descriptor that returns an error on reading or
writing.
EINTR An interrupting signal was caught like SIGINT or SIGCHLD etc.
In this case you should rebuild your file descriptor sets and
retry.
EINVAL Occurs if nfds is negative or an invalid value is specified in
utimeout or ntimeout.
ENOMEM Internal memory allocation failure.
NOTES
Generally speaking, all operating systems that support sockets, also
support select. Some people consider select to be an esoteric and
rarely used function. Indeed, many types of programs become extremely
complicated without it. select can be used to solve many problems in a
portable and efficient way that naive programmers try to solve with
threads, forking, IPCs, signals, memory sharing and other dirty meth-
ods. pselect is a newer function that is less commonly used.
The poll(2) system call has the same functionality as select, but with
less subtle behavior. It is less portable than select.
CONFORMINGTO
4.4BSD (the select function first appeared in 4.2BSD). Generally
portable to/from non-BSD systems supporting clones of the BSD socket
layer (including System V variants). However, note that the System V
variant typically sets the timeout variable before exit, but the BSD
variant does not.
The pselect function is defined in IEEE Std 1003.1g-2000 (POSIX.1g).
It is found in glibc2.1 and later. Glibc2.0 has a function with this
name, that however does not take a sigmask parameter.
SEEALSO
accept(2), connect(2), ioctl(2), poll(2), read(2), recv(2), select(2),
send(2), sigaddset(3), sigdelset(3), sigemptyset(3), sigfillset(3),
sigismember(3), sigprocmask(2), write(2)
AUTHORS
This man page was written by Paul Sheer.
Linux 2.4 October 21, 2001 SELECT_TUT(2)
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