Welcome, Guest. Please login or register. Did you miss your activation email?

Author Topic: My Issue with TcpListener listen() method  (Read 13031 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

KRS

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 19
  • The burning you feel?
    • View Profile
    • Email
My Issue with TcpListener listen() method
« on: March 24, 2021, 03:07:05 pm »
Hello! I'll be happy if someone will share their thought with me about this
Basically when
listen(unsigned short port);
is called like this
class C
{
        TcpListener l;
public:
        C() { l.listen(53000); };
};

C c;

int main()
{
        return 0;
}      
it prints in console
Failed to create socket

but if it's called like this
class C
{
        TcpListener l;
public:
        C() { l.listen(53000); };
};

int main()
{
        C c;
        return 0;
}
it's all good. Only difference I'm spotting is that in second variant, call is inside the main(). I want to know why is that happening, maybe I'm missing something. And is it connected with location like I noticed?

Kvaz1r

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 39
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: My Issue with TcpListener listen() method
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2021, 09:23:18 am »
I think the reason in Zero initialization. Here is blog post with more human explanation - Initialization in C++ is bonkers.

eXpl0it3r

  • SFML Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 10801
    • View Profile
    • development blog
    • Email
Re: My Issue with TcpListener listen() method
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2021, 01:11:19 pm »
You'd have to trace the code to see what state isn't necessarily lining up.

But using global variables is highly discouraged and not really supported by SFML.
Official FAQ: https://www.sfml-dev.org/faq.php
Official Discord Server: https://discord.gg/nr4X7Fh
——————————————————————
Dev Blog: https://duerrenberger.dev/blog/

Nexus

  • SFML Team
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6286
  • Thor Developer
    • View Profile
    • Bromeon
Re: My Issue with TcpListener listen() method
« Reply #3 on: April 11, 2021, 04:56:53 pm »
A bit late, but the reason is not zero initialization -- both times, the same constructor is called, default-constructing the sf::TcpListener member variable.

As expl0it3r mentioned, initialization at startup (i.e. from global variables) is a big mess in C++, as there's no deterministic order. So better avoid global variables in general, good design almost always makes them obsolete.
Zloxx II: action platformer
Thor Library: particle systems, animations, dot products, ...
SFML Game Development:

KRS

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 19
  • The burning you feel?
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: My Issue with TcpListener listen() method
« Reply #4 on: April 27, 2021, 05:32:54 pm »
I educated myself, thank you guys :D

kojack

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 300
  • C++/C# game dev teacher.
    • View Profile
Re: My Issue with TcpListener listen() method
« Reply #5 on: April 27, 2021, 06:21:25 pm »
A little more detail.
On windows, some initialisation code needs to be called to start Winsock.
In SFML, this is done in the SocketInitializer struct. It's created as a variable in SocketImpl.cpp as the file scope variable globalInitializer, it's constructor does the Winsock startup.

The problem is C++ has no defined order that static/file-scope variables are created. https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/siof  (Static Initialisation Order Fiasco)
So there's two file scope variables being made: globalInitializer (that sets up Winsock) and c (your class that needs Winsock), but there's no way to know which will be constructed first. If c is created before globalInitializer, it will fail.

In your second style, c is constructed in main. The main function is started after all static/file-scope variables have been built, so globalInitializer has definitely gotten to do its work first.

(To be accurate, the order is defined when they are all in the same cpp file. But when they are in different cpp files as is the case here, order is indeterminate)

KRS

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 19
  • The burning you feel?
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: My Issue with TcpListener listen() method
« Reply #6 on: May 01, 2021, 08:23:15 pm »
Ohhhh, I see now! Thank you so much ;D, I hate when i dont know what is happening and I must just leave it. But now I know. Тow my question is settled)

 

anything