read and write thread using a single tcp socket

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+1 Q:

read and write thread using a single tcp socket

Hi, I'm using a C socket library I found online to implement a tcp socket data transfer program.

Is it possible to make 2 threads share the same socket connection (1 read and 1 write), and have the read thread perform a blocking read and recv data while the write thread constantly writes data?

All of the example socket programs I've seen only do 1 way communication, or send data only after it receives.

Thank you.

+2 A:

I don't know of any technical reason why you can't do that. Whether it's advisable or not for your situation is another question. :)

The main situation in which you'd want to avoid this multi-threaded type of approach is if reads and writes are dependent on each other at the application level. I don't really know what you're doing with respect to handling the data, but the reader/writer approach can be difficult to unwind.

Seth 2010-01-25 19:23:36

ok thanks, just wanted to make sure it's possible since i've never seen any examples of it

2010-01-25 19:25:39

Actually my concern was: if u call a mutex around the socket read in the read thread, then how would the write thread access the socket.

2010-01-25 19:37:43

Well, if you use a mutex to only allow one thread to access the socket at a time, then your 2 thread model won't work. Essentially, you'd have to let both threads access the socket's file descriptor.

Seth 2010-01-25 19:55:14

But what happens if both threads call the read() and write() function from the socket class at the same time?

2010-01-25 20:04:07

TCP sockets are full-duplex, so you're fine. Modern TCP sockets are capable of exactly what you need. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_duplex#Full-duplex

Seth 2010-01-25 20:48:28

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