Client to connect to a chat server

Hi everybody,
I have a program server that receive strings from many clients and
then send this strings to all the clients connected to him. I connect
to the server with Telnet.
But if I want to write the program client I have a problem. I have to
write code that read from keyboard a string and a code that read
strings from the server (other clients), in this way a made a chat.
But if I write this, the program stops when he has to read from the
stdandard input (keyboard) and if there are data from the server he
don't go receive them.
Also if I write code that receive data from the server, if data isn't
there, I'm wasting my time.

How can I resolve this?
Thank you very much.

Nikolaj

Nikolaj wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> I have a program server that receive strings from many clients and
> then send this strings to all the clients connected to him. I connect
> to the server with Telnet.
> But if I want to write the program client I have a problem. I have to
> write code that read from keyboard a string and a code that read
> strings from the server (other clients), in this way a made a chat.
> But if I write this, the program stops when he has to read from the
> stdandard input (keyboard) and if there are data from the server he
> don't go receive them.
> Also if I write code that receive data from the server, if data isn't
> there, I'm wasting my time.
>
> How can I resolve this?
> Thank you very much.
>
> Nikolaj
>

What you are looking for is "select" and "non-blocking sockets". Go
here: http://linoleum.leapster.org and under "network programming" you
will find some examples how to use it.
Hint: when you read from the console, you read from a default
file-descriptor called "stdin". You can use "select" with any file
descriptor (sockets are "descriptors", too).

Mihai

Thank you very much Mihai!
I was thinking that the solution was somenthing like using select but
I wasn't certain.
If I have a program that read from a keyboard, it reads from a file
stdin, and when it reads from a server, it reads from a socket. Both of
them have a file descriptor.
So, I can use select to see in which file there are some activities,
I can control the file descriptor and I can read only from the file who
has some data.

Thank you again.

Nikolaj