Buffer size when receiving data through a socket?

[John Salerno]

"John Salerno" <johnjsal at NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote in message 
news:20080616202135.41c407de.johnjsal at NOSPAMgmail.com...
> from socket import *
>
> host = 'localhost'
> port = 51567
> address = (host, port)
> buffer_size = 1024
>
> client_socket = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
> client_socket.connect(address)
>
> while True:
>    data = raw_input('> ')
>    if not data:
>        break
>    client_socket.send(data)
>    data = client_socket.recv(buffer_size)
>    if not data:
>        break
>    print data
>
> client_socket.close()

Also, is that second "if not data: break" statement necessary? It seems like 
once you get past the first if, you don't need the second one. Of course, I 
guses it's possible that the server could return a False value, but even 
still, would it make sense to break out of the loop and close the connection 
because of that?

It runs fine without the if statement, but I'm wondering if I just haven't 
encountered the proper problem situation yet.