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
/* According to POSIX.1-2001 */
#include <sys/select.h>
/* According to earlier standards */
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int select(int nfds, fd_set *readfds, fd_set *writefds,
fd_set *exceptfds, struct timeval *utimeout);
void FD_CLR(int fd, fd_set *set);
int FD_ISSET(int fd, fd_set *set);
void FD_SET(int fd, fd_set *set);
void FD_ZERO(fd_set *set);
#include <sys/select.h>
int pselect(int nfds, fd_set *readfds, fd_set *writefds,
fd_set *exceptfds, const struct timespec *ntimeout,
const sigset_t *sigmask);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
pselect(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 200112L || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 600
DESCRIPTIONselect() (or pselect()) is the pivot function of most C programs that
handle 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. There‐
after, 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.
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
that are immediately available for reading with a recv(2) (for
sockets) or read(2) (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 descriptors. After select() has returned,
writefds will be cleared of all file descriptors except for
those that are immediately available for writing with a send(2)
(for sockets) or write(2) (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 that are
available for reading OOB data. You can only ever read one byte
of OOB data though (which is done with recv(2)), and writing OOB
data (done with send(2)) 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() may 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 struct timeval is defined as:
struct timeval {
time_t tv_sec; /* seconds */
long tv_usec; /* microseconds */
};
ntimeout
This argument has the same meaning as utimeout but struct time‐
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().
Combining Signal and Data Events
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 conditional 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 actually 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 sig‐
procmask(2). Our pselect() call would enable SIGCHLD by using the vir‐
gin 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 */
}
}
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 I/O from more
than one file descriptor where the data flow may be intermittent. If
you were to merely create a sequence of read(2) and write(2) 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 avail‐
able for data. select() efficiently copes with this situation.
A simple example of the use of select() can be found in the select(2)
manual page.
Select Law
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 to use select() without a timeout. Your pro‐
gram should have nothing to do if there is no data available. Code
that depends on timeouts is not usually portable and is 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 should be
checked to see if they are ready.
5. The functions read(2), recv(2), write(2), and send(2) do not neces‐
sarily read/write the full amount of data that you have requested.
If they do read/write the full amount, it's 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 manag‐
ing to send or receive a single byte.
6. Never read/write only in single bytes at a time unless you 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 larger.
7. The functions read(2), recv(2), write(2), and send(2) as well as
the select() call can return -1 with errno set to EINTR, or with
errno set to EAGAIN (EWOULDBLOCK). These results must be properly
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 I/O, you will not get
EAGAIN. Nonetheless you should still cope with these errors for
completeness.
8. Never call read(2), recv(2), write(2), or send(2) with a buffer
length of zero.
9. If the functions read(2), recv(2), write(2), and send(2) fail with
errors other than those listed in 7., or one of the input functions
returns 0, indicating end of file, then you should not pass that
descriptor to select() 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 precision by
using the timeout. (See further on.)
Usleep Emulation
On systems that do not have a usleep(3) 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 guaranteed to work on Unix systems, however.
RETURN VALUE
On success, select() returns the total number of file descriptors still
present in the file descriptor sets.
If select() timed out, then the return value will be zero. The file
descriptors set should be all empty (but may not be on some systems).
A return value of -1 indicates an error, with errno being set appropri‐
ately. In the case of an error, the contents of the returned sets and
the struct timeout contents are undefined and should not be used. pse‐
lect() however never modifies ntimeout.
NOTES
Generally speaking, all operating systems that support sockets, also
support select(). Many types of programs become extremely complicated
without the use of select(). select() can be used to solve many prob‐
lems in a portable and efficient way that naive programmers try to
solve in a more complicated manner using threads, forking, IPCs, sig‐
nals, memory sharing, and so on.
The poll(2) system call has the same functionality as select(), and is
somewhat more efficient when monitoring sparse file descriptor sets.
It is nowadays widely available, but historically was less portable
than select().
The Linux-specific epoll(7) API provides an interface that is more
efficient than select(2) and poll(2) when monitoring large numbers of
file descriptors.
EXAMPLE
Here is an example that better demonstrates the true utility of
select(). The listing below is 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", 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 do { \
if (fd1 >= 0) { \
shutdown(fd1, SHUT_RDWR); \
close(fd1); \
fd1 = -1; \
} \
} while (0)
#define SHUT_FD2 do { \
if (fd2 >= 0) { \
shutdown(fd2, SHUT_RDWR); \
close(fd2); \
fd2 = -1; \
} \
} while (0)
#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(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN);
forward_port = atoi(argv[2]);
h = listen_socket(atoi(argv[1]));
if (h < 0)
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
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(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
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;
}
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
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 simultane‐
ously. You might think it more efficient to use a fork(2) call and
devote a thread to each stream. This becomes more tricky than you
might suspect. Another idea is to set non-blocking I/O using an
ioctl(2) call. This also has its problems because you end up using
inefficient timeouts.
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.
SEE ALSOaccept(2), connect(2), ioctl(2), poll(2), read(2), recv(2), select(2),
send(2), sigprocmask(2), write(2), sigaddset(3), sigdelset(3), sigemp‐
tyset(3), sigfillset(3), sigismember(3), epoll(7)COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.15 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 2008-12-05 SELECT_TUT(2)
