This class mainly defines internal stuff to be used by derived classes.
The only public features that it defines, and which is therefore common to
all the socket classes, is the blocking state. All sockets can be set as
blocking or non-blocking.
In blocking mode, socket functions will hang until the operation completes,
which means that the entire program (well, in fact the current thread if you
use multiple ones) will be stuck waiting for your socket operation to
complete.
In non-blocking mode, all the socket functions will return immediately. If
the socket is not ready to complete the requested operation, the function
simply returns the proper status code (Socket.Status.NotReady).
The default mode, which is blocking, is the one that is generally used, in
combination with threads or selectors. The non-blocking mode is rather used
in real-time applications that run an endless loop that can poll the socket
often enough, and cannot afford blocking this loop.
This class mainly defines internal stuff to be used by derived classes.
The only public features that it defines, and which is therefore common to all the socket classes, is the blocking state. All sockets can be set as blocking or non-blocking.
In blocking mode, socket functions will hang until the operation completes, which means that the entire program (well, in fact the current thread if you use multiple ones) will be stuck waiting for your socket operation to complete.
In non-blocking mode, all the socket functions will return immediately. If the socket is not ready to complete the requested operation, the function simply returns the proper status code (Socket.Status.NotReady).
The default mode, which is blocking, is the one that is generally used, in combination with threads or selectors. The non-blocking mode is rather used in real-time applications that run an endless loop that can poll the socket often enough, and cannot afford blocking this loop.