From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2005-09-08T14:18:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Nonblocking and/or win32

From: "Morgan" <taria@the-arc.net>

> (I could use recv with
> a number larger than anything I should ever have waiting for an argument,
> but that's crude.

Just curious why that would seem crude.  It's my understanding
that's why recv() behaves as it does.

The following is untested, but is similar to what I've written
many times:

def TCPSocket.read_all_available
  buf = ""
  while select([self], nil, nil, 0)
    dat = self.recv(65536) rescue nil
    break unless dat && ! dat.empty?
    buf << dat
  end
  buf
end

Usually instead of just a "break", I'll set an "eof" flag
when I get a nil (or an exception) back from recv().
(Note that select() will indicate that a socket is 
'readable' if it's at EOF, but then recv() returns nothing
and/or an exception... as I recall... Thus the above
'rescue nil' followed by checking for no data returned.)

But anyway . . .

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Bill