Using a single socket for accept() as well as connect()?

Hi,

How can a single socket be used to accept() as well as to connect().? Is it possible and what is the best way to implement it? Any sample code would be helpful.

Here is what I want to do.

Open a socket on a port and accept() on it for a certain amount of time. If a connection is received in that time from the remote peer then send/recv with new socket descriptor. Otherwise, attempt a connection to the remote peer using the same socket and once established, start send/recv.

I am developing on linux.

Thanks,

what do you mean by attempt a connection using the same socket? You can use the same variable name but you can't create a listener socket and then turn around and try to use it as a client socket with the same socket identifier. Just create a new socket to connect, I don't understand why that would be a problem.

yeah, creating 2 separate sockets was my way out of this problem. I thought may be someone else might have some better solution than that. I guess not. I have no choice but to go ahead with 2 separate sockets.

Why is that a problem in the first place? Sockets are very lightweight in just about any OS, and if you want 1 socket for 2 things then you are not going to be using the same socket to accept still so you can just close it and it gets freed anyways.