I usually go with something like the implementation given in Josh Bloch's fabulous Effective Java. It's fast and creates a pretty good hash which is unlikely to cause collisions. Pick two different prime numbers, e.g. 17 and 23, and do:
public override int GetHashCode()
{
unchecked // Overflow is fine, just wrap
{
int hash = 17;
// Suitable nullity checks etc, of course :)
hash = hash * 23 + field1.GetHashCode();
hash = hash * 23 + field2.GetHashCode();
hash = hash * 23 + field3.GetHashCode();
return hash;
}
}
As noted in comments, you may find it's better to pick a large prime to multiply by instead. Apparently 486187739 is good... and although most examples I've seen with small numbers tend to use primes, there are at least similar algorithms where non-prime numbers are often used. In the not-quite-FNV example later, for example, I've used numbers which apparently work well - but the initial value isn't a prime. (The multiplication constant is prime though. I don't know quite how important that is.)
This is better than the common practice of XOR
ing hashcodes for two main reasons. Suppose we have a type with two int
fields:
XorHash(x, x) == XorHash(y, y) == 0 for all x, y
XorHash(x, y) == XorHash(y, x) for all x, y
By the way, the earlier algorithm is the one currently used by the C# compiler for anonymous types.
This page gives quite a few options. I think for most cases the above is "good enough" and it's incredibly easy to remember and get right. The FNV alternative is similarly simple, but uses different constants and XOR
instead of ADD
as a combining operation. It looks something like the code below, but the normal FNV algorithm operates on individual bytes, so this would require modifying to perform one iteration per byte, instead of per 32-bit hash value. FNV is also designed for variable lengths of data, whereas the way we're using it here is always for the same number of field values. Comments on this answer suggest that the code here doesn't actually work as well (in the sample case tested) as the addition approach above.
// Note: Not quite FNV!
public override int GetHashCode()
{
unchecked // Overflow is fine, just wrap
{
int hash = (int) 2166136261;
// Suitable nullity checks etc, of course :)
hash = (hash * 16777619) ^ field1.GetHashCode();
hash = (hash * 16777619) ^ field2.GetHashCode();
hash = (hash * 16777619) ^ field3.GetHashCode();
return hash;
}
}
Note that one thing to be aware of is that ideally you should prevent your equality-sensitive (and thus hashcode-sensitive) state from changing after adding it to a collection that depends on the hash code.
As per the documentation:
You can override GetHashCode for immutable reference types. In general, for mutable reference types, you should override GetHashCode only if:
- You can compute the hash code from fields that are not mutable; or
- You can ensure that the hash code of a mutable object does not change while the object is contained in a collection that relies on its hash code.
The link to the FNV article is broken but here is a copy in the Internet Archive: Eternally Confuzzled - The Art of Hashing
In TCP there is only one way to detect an orderly disconnect, and that is by getting zero as a return value from read()/recv()/recvXXX()
when reading.
There is also only one reliable way to detect a broken connection: by writing to it. After enough writes to a broken connection, TCP will have done enough retries and timeouts to know that it's broken and will eventually cause write()/send()/sendXXX()
to return -1 with an errno/WSAGetLastError()
value of ECONNRESET,
or in some cases 'connection timed out'. Note that the latter is different from 'connect timeout', which can occur in the connect phase.
You should also set a reasonable read timeout, and drop connections that fail it.
The answer here about ioctl()
and FIONREAD
is compete nonsense. All that does is tell you how many bytes are presently in the socket receive buffer, available to be read without blocking. If a client doesn't send you anything for five minutes that doesn't constitute a disconnect, but it does cause FIONREAD
to be zero. Not the same thing: not even close.
Best Answer
The only other option is if it is TCP is to have TCP send a keep-alive every so often, which is still polling such as what you're doing now but handled at the TCP layer so you're protocol doesn't need to know.
There's no way around the polling however since without sending something to the other client and getting a response you have no way to know whether it's still connected or not.
Keep alive may also be required anyway when communicating through stateful packet inspection such as standard NAPT to avoid having the remote server drop the session due to in-activity.