Is there any way to associate a file descriptor with user defined data?

Question

I am writing a client-server application, and it uses POSIX poll function to provide a form of concurrent client handling. Clients also have state and other related data, which is stored in a client structure.

My immediate problem is that when I get a hint from poll to do I/O on a socket file descriptor that is associated with a client (conceptually), I have to actually match the file descriptor to its associated client data structure. Currently I do a O(n_clients) lookup (my client data structure stores the descriptor), but I was wondering whether there exists a better alternative?

Answer 1

No. If there were, it would have to be tracked by the kernel, and looking up that data would therefore involve a system call. The cost of a system call is an order of magnitude more expensive than doing an O(n) lookup in user space.

How many clients are you dealing with at once? Unless it's on the order of hundreds or more, the cost of a lookup is going to be miniscule compared to the cost of doing any sort of I/O.

Instead of using an O(n) lookup, you could also just use an array indexed by the file descriptor, assuming you won't have more than a certain number of descriptors open at once. For example:

#define MY_MAX_FD 1024  // Tune this to your needs
void *per_fd_data[MY_MAX_FD];

void *get_per_fd_data(int fd)
{
    assert(fd >= 0);
    if(fd < MY_MAX_FD)
        return per_fd_data[fd];
    else
    {
        // Look up fd in a dynamic associative array (left as an exercise to the
        // reader)
    }
}

Answer 2

Cheapest is to just make a fixed-size array of connection structures, with {state, *context, ..., maybe callback functions} per entry, indexed by fd (=O(1)). Memory is cheap, and you can afford a few hundred or thousand file descriptors and table entries.

EDIT: You dont need to make it fixed size. If your pollstructure or fdset is fixed: make it fixed; otherwise use getdtablesize() or getrlimit() to get the number of entries to allocate.