Infinite loop when reading from socket

Question

I have the following code on the server side:

InputStream in = socket.getInputStream();
int x;
while(true) {
      x = in.read();
      if(x < 0) break;
      System.out.print((char)x);
}

The client is properly connected and sends some string to the server. But the while loop runs forever. How to detect when the end of the input stream is reached.

@AmanArora why should he change it to `x>0` ? This won't detect the end but will cause the loop to stop when the first byte arrives — Kevin, Jul 09 '15 at 13:04
@HyperZ I thought the code should come out of loop as soon as some data arrives in the stream — Aman Arora, Jul 09 '15 at 13:05
I suspect this isn't looping forever, but rather blocking on the `read()` — weston, Jul 09 '15 at 13:07
they way you are doing it, the only time you will get a `-1` is when the socket is actually closed; usually by the other end. This will not work like it would for reading a file. — , Jul 09 '15 at 13:09
You will be interested in this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5562370/how-to-identify-end-of-inputstream-in-java — Matthew Clark, Jul 09 '15 at 13:15

Mackiavelli · Answer 1 · 2015-07-09T13:08:37.993

0

Try this:

while((x = in.read()) >= 0) System.out.println((char)x);

in.read() returns the read byte from the stream. If there is no byte to be read, the method will return -1.

edited Jul 09 '15 at 13:08

answered Jul 09 '15 at 13:06

Mackiavelli

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How is this different to what they already have? And why is `0` not valid? – weston Jul 09 '15 at 13:06
this will not work for sockets any better than the original code, this is not an answer – Jul 09 '15 at 13:11

Infinite loop when reading from socket

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