Network, sClose

[Glynn Clements]

Jon Fairbairn wrote:

> I just got myself a copy of ghc-6.2.1 and was idly
> experimenting with Network in ghci.

> Unfortunately a second attempt is not so happy:
> 
>    Prelude System.Posix Network> do r <- recvFrom "localhost"$ PortNumber 9090; putStr r
>    *** Exception: bind: resource busy (Address already in use)
> 
> According to the documentation there's some mention of
> "Address already in use" on this mailing list, but I
> couldn't find it -- I thought there used to be searchable
> archives of the mailing lists, but I couldn't find those
> either and resorted to google.
> 
> A little experimentation revealed that:
> 
>    do sock <- listenOn$PortNumber 7607; (hdl,host,port)<- accept sock; s<-IO.hGetContents hdl; putStr$s; IO.hClose hdl; Network.Socket.sClose sock
> 
> is nicely repeatable. The following questions arise:
> 
> * Shouldn't recvFrom call sClose itself?

recvFrom can't close the socket until the data has been consumed.

> * If not, how should one clean up after using recvFrom?

You can't; once recvFrom returns, there's no way to get at the
listening socket (or, for that matter, the connection socket).

> * Shouldn't sClose be reexported from Network?

Once you start down that route, you end up at the inevitable
conclusion that everything from the raw syscall imports upwards needs
to be re-exported.

> * is there a general way to get ghci out of a state where
>   it's got stuff open on inaccessible sockets?

The solution to most problems with the Network module is not to use
the Network module, but to use Network.Socket instead.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn.clements at virgin.net>