Detecting a connection loss && other network questions

Ruby
1

Hello all,

I’m trying to get acquainted with network programming in Ruby and I’m
facing several problems. The biggest 2 are

  1. How do I detect a connection loss when it happens while the client is
    blocking, waiting for data? According to Stevens, most tcp
    implementations time out after 11 minutes, but I disconnected my cable
    and waited long after that–nothing. Is this my fault? Is it a ruby
    problem?

  2. The client (an IRC bot) seems to be stuck sometimes. Suddenly, input
    stops, it stops logging data, everything stops. This happens on a
    particular IRC server (heinlein.freenode.net) in the middle of the MOTD,
    but happened a few days ago on another server during normal usage. The
    code I’m using is

buffer = @socket.recvfrom(512).first
messages = buffer.split /\n/

@messages.last << messages.shift
if @messages.last && @messages.last[-1] != ?\r

@messages += messages

An interesting twist is that this doesn’t happen on heinlein upon
connection if I print the contents of the array I get from recvfrom.
Seems to be some kind of flushing problem, but I don’t know enough about
it to be sure.

Any ideas?

Cheers,

David