Non-blocking TCP connections

[twerq]

Many people have posted asking for help with a non-blocking IO::Socket::INET connection, specifically as a tcp client. As far as I could see, there was no way. . . hence this small hack. Simply use IO::Socket::INET_NONBLOCK and your sockets will be returned (true) every time, almost immediately. Which can be very useful in conjunction with IO::Select, when you have to do many connections and don't want to wait on them. . . mail me here with any success or failure reports. .

# IO::Socket::INET_NONBLOCK.pm
#
# Copyright (c) 2001 Derek Watson <[e-mail]>.
#
# Cheap Hack(tm) agains Graham Barr's IO::Socket::INET
# to allow non-blocking client Socket connections
#

package IO::Socket::INET_NONBLOCK;

use strict;
our(@ISA, $VERSION);
use IO::Socket::INET;
use Carp;

@ISA = qw(IO::Socket::INET);

sub connect {

        # this is a redifined IO::Socket::INET->connect

        @_ == 2 || @_ == 3 or
        croak 'usage: $sock->connect(NAME) or $sock->connect(PORT, ADD
+R)';

        # grab our socket
        my $sock = shift;

        # set to non-blocking
        $sock->blocking(0);

        # pack the host address
        my $addr = @_ == 1 ? shift : pack_sockaddr_in(@_);

        # pass directly to perl's connect() function,
        # bypassing the call to IO::Socket->connect
        # which usually handles timeouts, blocking
        # and error handling.
        connect($sock, $addr);

        # lets just go ahead and assume it worked. . .
        return 1;
}

1;