timeout and sockets example request??

Thu Jul 22 15:39:23 EDT 2004

Ishwar Rattan wrote:
> In section 7.2 of Python library reference manual:
> 
> exception timeout 
> This exception is raised when a timeout occurs on a socket which has had
> timeouts enabled via a prior call to settimeout(). The accompanying value
> is a string whose value is currently always ``timed out''. New in version 2.3.
> 
> I assumed that settimeout() is an attribute of newly created socket object,
> but is not so!

What version of Python are you using? Could you post some code showing 
what didn't work? Here's why I ask:

Python 2.3.4 (#53, May 25 2004, 21:17:02)...
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "l...
 >>> from socket import *
 >>> s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
 >>> s.settimeout(5)
 >>>

(no errors)

setdefaulttimeout is handy when you don't have access to the actual 
socket object, e.g.:

 >>> import socket
 >>> socket.getdefaulttimeout()
10.0
 >>> socket.setdefaulttimeout(3)
 >>> import urllib
 >>> urllib.urlopen('http://www.google.com').read()
'<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content=...

-Dave