Styjun

I am trying to learn Python sockets and have hit a snare with the socket.accept() method. As I understand the method, once I call accept, the thread will sit and wait for an incoming connection (blocking all following code). However, in the code below, which I got from https://docs.python.org/2/library/socket.html and am using localhost. I added a print('hello') to the first line of the server. Yet the print doesn't appear until after I disconnect the client. Why is this? Why does accept seem to run before my print yet after I bind the socket?

# Echo server program
import socket

print('hello') # This doesn't print until I disconnect the client
HOST = 'localhost' 
PORT = 50007 
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind((HOST, PORT))
s.listen(1)
conn, addr = s.accept()
print 'Connected by', addr
while 1:
 data = conn.recv(1024)
 if not data: break
 conn.sendall(data)
conn.close()

# Echo client program
import socket

HOST = 'localhost' # The remote host
PORT = 50007 # The same port as used by the server
s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.connect((HOST, PORT))
s.sendall('Hello, world')
data = s.recv(1024)
s.close()
print 'Received', repr(data)

You are likely using an output device on a system that Python's IO doesn't recognize as interactive. As a workaround, you can add sys.stdout.flush() after the print.

The standard output is a buffered stream, meaning that when you print something, the output sticks around in an internal buffer until you print enough data to fill the whole buffer (unlikely in a small program, the buffet is several kilobytes in size), or until the program exits, when all such buffers are automatically flushed. Normally when the output is a terminal service, the IO layer automatically switches to line buffering, where the buffer is also flushed whenever a newline character is printed (and which the print statement inserts automatically).

For some reason, that doesn't work on your system, and you have to flush explicitly. Another option is to run python -u, which should force unbuffered standard streams.