WinSock Client C

Question

I have a client using select() to check if there is anything to be received, else it times out and the user is able to send(). Which works well enough. However, the program locks up waiting for user input, so it cant recv() again until the user has sent something. I am not having much luck with using threads either, as I cannot seem to find a good resource, which shows me how to use them.

I have tried a creating two threads (using CreateThread) for send and recv functions which are basically two functions using while loops to keep sending and receiving. And then the two CreateThreads() are wrapped up in a while loop, because otherwise it just seemed to drop out.

I have basically no previous experience with threads, so my description of what i've been doing will probably sound ridiculous. But I would appreciate any help, in using them properly for this kind of use, or an alternative method would also be great.

Answer 1

Can't find a good resource on socket programming? Bah. Read the bible:

• Unix Network Programming

Answer 2

It sounds like you could use a good primer on network programming and on threads as well. Trying to learn both at once is not easy (read: drinking from two fire hoses) but not impossible. A really good place to start is with Beej's Guides.

In particular, his guide to network programming is top-notch and does address network programming in Windows (though the guide is primarily POSIX-oriented).

Threads are a different beast. I've only worked with pthreads, so unless you're using a Windows pthreads API, I can't help you there.

Answer 3

_{this has a strong feel of assignment work...}

I am not too much into Windows programming but when I did do some earlier, there used to be a kbhit (probably) function that allowed you to check if the user had sent any inputs. You could look for something similar and try a non-blocking user input check before starting your select again.

You could then get this working without multi-threading
^{(unless, er, you have to use that).}