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Let’s say I’m running a simple server and have accept()ed a connection from a client.
What is the best way to tell when the client has disconnected? Normally, a client is supposed to send a close command, but what if it disconnects manually or loses network connection altogether? How can the server detect or handle this?
select (with the read mask set) will return with the handle signalled, but when you use ioctl* to check the number of bytes pending to be read, it will be zero. This is a sign that the socket has been disconnected.
This is a great discussion on the various methods of checking that the client has disconnected: Stephen Cleary, Detection of Half-Open (Dropped) Connections.
* for Windows use ioctlsocket.