5.6. Built-in module select

error -- exception of module select

The exception raised when an error occurs. The accompanying value is a pair containing the numeric error code from errno and the corresponding string, as would be printed by the C function perror().

select (iwtd, owtd, ewtd, timeout) -- function of module select

This is a straightforward interface to the UNIX select() system call. The first three arguments are lists of `waitable objects': either integers representing UNIX file descriptors or objects with a parameterless method named fileno() returning such an integer. The three lists of waitable objects are for input, output and `exceptional conditions', respectively. Empty lists are allowed. The optional last argument is a time-out specified as a floating point number in seconds. When the timeout argument is omitted the function blocks until at least one file descriptor is ready. A time-out value of zero specifies a poll and never blocks.

The return value is a triple of lists of objects that are ready: subsets of the first three arguments. When the time-out is reached without a file descriptor becoming ready, three empty lists are returned.

Amongst the acceptable object types in the lists are Python file objects (e.g. sys.stdin, or objects returned by open() or posix.popen()), socket objects returned by socket.socket(), and the module stdwin which happens to define a function fileno() for just this purpose. You may also define a wrapper class yourself, as long as it has an appropriate fileno() method (that really returns a UNIX file descriptor, not just a random integer).