NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | NOTES | EXAMPLE | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

SELECT_TUT(2)             Linux Programmer's Manual            SELECT_TUT(2)

NAME         top

       select,  pselect, FD_CLR, FD_ISSET, FD_SET, FD_ZERO - synchronous I/O
       multiplexing

SYNOPSIS         top

       /* According to POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008 */
       #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

DESCRIPTION         top

       select() (or pselect()) is used to efficiently monitor multiple file
       descriptors, to see if any of them is, or becomes, "ready"; that is,
       to see whether I/O becomes possible, or an "exceptional condition"
       has occurred on any of the file descriptors.
       Its principal arguments are three "sets" of file descriptors:
       readfds, writefds, and exceptfds.  Each set is declared as type
       fd_set, and its contents can be manipulated with the macros FD_CLR(),
       FD_ISSET(), FD_SET(), and FD_ZERO().  A newly declared set should
       first be cleared using FD_ZERO().  select() modifies the contents of
       the sets according to the rules described below; after calling
       select() you can test if a file descriptor is still present in a set
       with the FD_ISSET() macro.  FD_ISSET() returns nonzero if a specified
       file descriptor is present in a set and zero if it is not.  FD_CLR()
       removes a file descriptor from a 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.
       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.
       exceptfds
              This set is watched for "exceptional conditions".  In
              practice, only one such exceptional condition is common: the
              availability of out-of-band (OOB) data for reading from a TCP
              socket.  See recv(2), send(2), and tcp(7) for more details
              about OOB data.  (One other less common case where select(2)
              indicates an exceptional condition occurs with pseudoterminals
              in packet mode; see ioctl_tty(2).)  After select() has
              returned, exceptfds will be cleared of all file descriptors
              except for those for which an exceptional condition has
              occurred.
       nfds   This is an integer one more than the maximum of any file
              descriptor in any of the sets.  In other words, while adding
              file descriptors to each of the sets, you must calculate the
              maximum integer value of all of them, then increment this
              value by one, and then pass this as nfds.
       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 a file
              descriptor to become ready.  utimeout can be set to zero
              seconds, which causes select() to return immediately, with
              information about the readiness of file descriptors at the
              time of the call.  The structure struct timeval is defined as:
                  struct timeval {
                      time_t tv_sec;    /* seconds */
                      long tv_usec;     /* microseconds */
                  };
       ntimeout
              This argument for pselect() has the same meaning as utimeout,
              but struct timespec has nanosecond precision as follows:
                  struct timespec {
                      long tv_sec;    /* seconds */
                      long tv_nsec;   /* nanoseconds */
                  };
       sigmask
              This argument holds a set of signals that the kernel should
              unblock (i.e., remove from the signal mask of the calling
              thread), while the caller is blocked inside the pselect() call
              (see sigaddset(3) and sigprocmask(2)).  It may be NULL, in
              which case the call does not modify the signal mask on entry
              and exit to the function.  In this case, pselect() will then
              behave just like select().
   Combining signal and data events
       pselect() is useful if you are waiting for a signal as well as for
       file descriptor(s) to become ready for I/O.  Programs that receive
       signals normally 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
       set the signal mask to a set of signals that are to be received only
       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(2).  Our
       pselect() call would enable SIGCHLD by using an empty signal mask.
       Our program would look like:
       static volatile sig_atomic_t got_SIGCHLD = 0;
       static void
       child_sig_handler(int sig)
       {
           got_SIGCHLD = 1;
       }
       int
       main(int argc, char *argv[])
       {
           sigset_t sigmask, empty_mask;
           struct sigaction sa;
           fd_set readfds, writefds, exceptfds;
           int r;
           sigemptyset(&sigmask);
           sigaddset(&sigmask, SIGCHLD);
           if (sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, &sigmask, NULL) == -1) {
               perror("sigprocmask");
               exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
           }
           sa.sa_flags = 0;
           sa.sa_handler = child_sig_handler;
           sigemptyset(&sa.sa_mask);
           if (sigaction(SIGCHLD, &sa, NULL) == -1) {
               perror("sigaction");
               exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
           }
           sigemptyset(&empty_mask);
           for (;;) {          /* main loop */
               /* Initialize readfds, writefds, and exceptfds
                  before the pselect() call. (Code omitted.) */
               r = pselect(nfds, &readfds, &writefds, &exceptfds,
                           NULL, &empty_mask);
               if (r == -1 && errno != EINTR) {
                   /* Handle error */
               }
               if (got_SIGCHLD) {
                   got_SIGCHLD = 0;
                   /* Handle signalled event here; e.g., wait() for all
                      terminated children. (Code omitted.) */
               }
               /* main body of program */
           }
       }
   Practical
       So what is the point of select()?  Can't I just read and write to my
       file 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.  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 ready for I/O.  select() efficiently copes with this
       situation.
   Select law
       Many people who try to use select() come across behavior that is
       difficult to understand and produces nonportable 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 nonblocking mode.  It is easy to introduce subtle errors that will
       remove the advantage of using select(), so here is a list of
       essentials to watch for when using select().
       1.  You should always try to 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 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
           appropriately.  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
           necessarily 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 managing to send or receive only 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 below 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 nonblocking I/O, you
           will not get EAGAIN.
       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 file descriptor to select() again.  In the example
           below, I close the file 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.
           pselect() however does not modify its timeout structure.
       11. Since select() modifies its file descriptor sets, if the call is
           being used in a loop, then the sets must be reinitialized before
           each call.
   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 guaranteed to work only on UNIX systems, however.

RETURN VALUE         top

       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
       appropriately.  In the case of an error, the contents of the returned
       sets and the struct timeout contents are undefined and should not be
       used.  pselect() however never modifies ntimeout.

NOTES         top

       Generally speaking, all operating systems that support sockets also
       support select().  select() can be used to solve many problems in a
       portable and efficient way that naive programmers try to solve in a
       more complicated manner using threads, forking, IPCs, signals, 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         top

       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 addr;
           int lfd;
           int yes;
           lfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
           if (lfd == -1) {
               perror("socket");
               return -1;
           }
           yes = 1;
           if (setsockopt(lfd, SOL_SOCKET, SO_REUSEADDR,
                   &yes, sizeof(yes)) == -1) {
               perror("setsockopt");
               close(lfd);
               return -1;
           }
           memset(&addr, 0, sizeof(addr));
           addr.sin_port = htons(listen_port);
           addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
           if (bind(lfd, (struct sockaddr *) &addr, sizeof(addr)) == -1) {
               perror("bind");
               close(lfd);
               return -1;
           }
           printf("accepting connections on port %d\n", listen_port);
           listen(lfd, 10);
           return lfd;
       }
       static int
       connect_socket(int connect_port, char *address)
       {
           struct sockaddr_in addr;
           int cfd;
           cfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
           if (cfd == -1) {
               perror("socket");
               return -1;
           }
           memset(&addr, 0, sizeof(addr));
           addr.sin_port = htons(connect_port);
           addr.sin_family = AF_INET;
           if (!inet_aton(address, (struct in_addr *) &addr.sin_addr.s_addr)) {
               perror("bad IP address format");
               close(cfd);
               return -1;
           }
           if (connect(cfd, (struct sockaddr *) &addr, sizeof(addr)) == -1) {
               perror("connect()");
               shutdown(cfd, SHUT_RDWR);
               close(cfd);
               return -1;
           }
           return cfd;
       }
       #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 = 0, buf1_written = 0;
           int buf2_avail = 0, buf2_written = 0;
           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 == -1)
               exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
           for (;;) {
               int ready, nfds = 0;
               ssize_t nbytes;
               fd_set readfds, writefds, exceptfds;
               FD_ZERO(&readfds);
               FD_ZERO(&writefds);
               FD_ZERO(&exceptfds);
               FD_SET(h, &readfds);
               nfds = max(nfds, h);
               if (fd1 > 0 && buf1_avail < BUF_SIZE)
                   FD_SET(fd1, &readfds);
                   /* Note: nfds is updated below, when fd1 is added to
                      exceptfds. */
               if (fd2 > 0 && buf2_avail < BUF_SIZE)
                   FD_SET(fd2, &readfds);
               if (fd1 > 0 && buf2_avail - buf2_written > 0)
                   FD_SET(fd1, &writefds);
               if (fd2 > 0 && buf1_avail - buf1_written > 0)
                   FD_SET(fd2, &writefds);
               if (fd1 > 0) {
                   FD_SET(fd1, &exceptfds);
                   nfds = max(nfds, fd1);
               }
               if (fd2 > 0) {
                   FD_SET(fd2, &exceptfds);
                   nfds = max(nfds, fd2);
               }
               ready = select(nfds + 1, &readfds, &writefds, &exceptfds, NULL);
               if (ready == -1 && errno == EINTR)
                   continue;
               if (ready == -1) {
                   perror("select()");
                   exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
               }
               if (FD_ISSET(h, &readfds)) {
                   socklen_t addrlen;
                   struct sockaddr_in client_addr;
                   int fd;
                   addrlen = sizeof(client_addr);
                   memset(&client_addr, 0, addrlen);
                   fd = accept(h, (struct sockaddr *) &client_addr, &addrlen);
                   if (fd == -1) {
                       perror("accept()");
                   } else {
                       SHUT_FD1;
                       SHUT_FD2;
                       buf1_avail = buf1_written = 0;
                       buf2_avail = buf2_written = 0;
                       fd1 = fd;
                       fd2 = connect_socket(forward_port, argv[3]);
                       if (fd2 == -1)
                           SHUT_FD1;
                       else
                           printf("connect from %s\n",
                                   inet_ntoa(client_addr.sin_addr));
                       /* Skip any events on the old, closed file descriptors. */
                       continue;
                   }
               }
               /* NB: read OOB data before normal reads */
               if (fd1 > 0 && FD_ISSET(fd1, &exceptfds)) {
                   char c;
                   nbytes = recv(fd1, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
                   if (nbytes < 1)
                       SHUT_FD1;
                   else
                       send(fd2, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
               }
               if (fd2 > 0 && FD_ISSET(fd2, &exceptfds)) {
                   char c;
                   nbytes = recv(fd2, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
                   if (nbytes < 1)
                       SHUT_FD2;
                   else
                       send(fd1, &c, 1, MSG_OOB);
               }
               if (fd1 > 0 && FD_ISSET(fd1, &readfds)) {
                   nbytes = read(fd1, buf1 + buf1_avail,
                             BUF_SIZE - buf1_avail);
                   if (nbytes < 1)
                       SHUT_FD1;
                   else
                       buf1_avail += nbytes;
               }
               if (fd2 > 0 && FD_ISSET(fd2, &readfds)) {
                   nbytes = read(fd2, buf2 + buf2_avail,
                             BUF_SIZE - buf2_avail);
                   if (nbytes < 1)
                       SHUT_FD2;
                   else
                       buf2_avail += nbytes;
               }
               if (fd1 > 0 && FD_ISSET(fd1, &writefds) && buf2_avail > 0) {
                   nbytes = write(fd1, buf2 + buf2_written,
                              buf2_avail - buf2_written);
                   if (nbytes < 1)
                       SHUT_FD1;
                   else
                       buf2_written += nbytes;
               }
               if (fd2 > 0 && FD_ISSET(fd2, &writefds) && buf1_avail > 0) {
                   nbytes = write(fd2, buf1 + buf1_written,
                              buf1_avail - buf1_written);
                   if (nbytes < 1)
                       SHUT_FD2;
                   else
                       buf1_written += nbytes;
               }
               /* 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
       simultaneously.  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 nonblocking I/O using
       fcntl(2).  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
       connections cause the current connection to be dropped.

SEE ALSO         top

       accept(2), connect(2), ioctl(2), poll(2), read(2), recv(2),
       select(2), send(2), sigprocmask(2), write(2), sigaddset(3),
       sigdelset(3), sigemptyset(3), sigfillset(3), sigismember(3), epoll(7)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of release 4.12 of the Linux man-pages project.  A
       description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the
       latest version of this page, can be found at
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux                            2017-05-03                    SELECT_TUT(2)

Pages that refer to this page: poll(2)select(2)