reading data from a socket

[bitwise]

I'm try to read data from a socket after connecting to an FTP server like this:

while((numbytes=read(sockfd, read_buffer, MAXDATASIZE-1)) > 0) {
read_buffer[numbytes] = '\0';
printf("%s",read_buffer);
}

This works, however, we never break out of the loop. The read just sites and waits for more data. I've looked at socket programming examples and all the examples just check if the bytes read are > 0. What might I be doing wrong?

Thanks,
bitwise

 

[rwb1959]

Normally you would just read for the number
of bytes you want then go do somthing.
In your code, the only thing that will
break you out is some sort of signal or error
(ie. the other end disconnects you get a broken pipe)
You can also set up the socketfd in a "poll" fdset
and non-blocking reads. You may want to pick up
the book: Unix Network Programming by W. Richard Stevens (Prentice-Hall 1990, ISBN 0-13-949876-1)

There are other book as well but I found this one
to be very useful for many years.