Problem with empty stream

Hi
my problem is as follows:
I'm coding (actually fixing a problem on a cusomer site) a program which receives a stream of input from a different program which I have absolutely no control over (and asking them to make a change will take a long time).

The program actually opens a thread for each connected client and each thread opens a buffer for the client's stream.
When a client is connected a thread is opened with a buffer for the stream, when a client is disconnecte the thread is closed including closing the buffer.
Opening the buffer is done with fdopen
Reading is done with fgets
and closing is done with fclose

The problem occurs when the client is not sending any input and the buffer is empty when the client is disconnected.
When trying to close with fclose, it just hangs and doesn't finish.
I assume this is because fclose flushes the buffer before closing and the flush is stuck (I also confirmed that by trying to use fflush which also got stuck).

I've searched books and have google'd to find ideas and solutions, I made several attempts. The functions that got "stuck" on me so far are: fclose, fflush, ftell and fseek
How can I close the buffer or determine that the buffer is empty?

I would appreciate any suggestion or idea

Thanks in advance
Sigal

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sshahar1

When trying to close with fclose, it just hangs and doesn't finish.
I assume this is because fclose flushes the buffer before closing and the flush is stuck (I also confirmed that by trying to use fflush which also got stuck).

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I thought this was an input stream. You don't really "flush" those.

What sort of descriptor are you opening with fdopen()?

Hi
thanks for your reply :-)
The 2nd program gives its output to the standard output so we're reading the input stream from a pipe.
When running fclose I don't have a choice, it flushes the buffer whether I want to or not.

For now I have a workaround I wrote a shell wrapper that prints a blank line (with echo) and then runs our software, since our software can handle blank lines.

Thanks
Sigal

Quote:

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

I thought this was an input stream. You don't really "flush" those.

What sort of descriptor are you opening with fdopen()?

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To reiterate what was already said, fclose() does not flush input streams, so instead of just repeating yourself, perhaps you could clarify what the heck you're talking about.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by sshahar1

Hi
thanks for your reply :-)
The 2nd program gives its output to the standard output so we're reading the input stream from a pipe.
When running fclose I don't have a choice, it flushes the buffer whether I want to or not.

For now I have a workaround I wrote a shell wrapper that prints a blank line (with echo) and then runs our software, since our software can handle blank lines.

Thanks
Sigal

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What might be happening is, the client program is failing to launch. This means the write-side of the pipe, which is created by the parent, is never closed (because it would only be closed if the program actually terminated normally). Before the read side can close, the write side must also close. So the read side deadlocks when it attempts to close.

The solution is to check if the launch of the client program actually succeeded. If it failed, you have to close the WRITE SIDE of the pipe YOURSELF before attempted to close the read side.

fclose flushes, please refer to: http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi?fclose+3C

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MacGyver

To reiterate what was already said, fclose() does not flush input streams, so instead of just repeating yourself, perhaps you could clarify what the heck you're talking about.

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The launch was verified, the process is up. When closing the thread we also terminate the client before running fclose.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

What might be happening is, the client program is failing to launch. This means the write-side of the pipe, which is created by the parent, is never closed (because it would only be closed if the program actually terminated normally). Before the read side can close, the write side must also close. So the read side deadlocks when it attempts to close.

The solution is to check if the launch of the client program actually succeeded. If it failed, you have to close the WRITE SIDE of the pipe YOURSELF before attempted to close the read side.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by sshahar1

fclose flushes, please refer to:

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It doesn't flush INPUT STREAMS. Since no such thing exists. Read the words.

Not to sound condescending but there is a major difference between input and output under the hood.