I was looking through a Python implementation of socketpair that uses standard sockets. Here's the code snippet I found: def socketpair(family=AF_INET, type=SOCK_STREAM, proto=0): if family == AF_INET: host = _LOCALHOST elif family == AF_INET6: host = _LOCALHOST_V6 else: raise ValueError("Only AF_INET and AF_INET6 socket address families " "are supported") if type != SOCK_STREAM: raise ValueError("Only SOCK_STREAM socket type is supported") if proto != 0: raise ValueError("Only protocol zero is supported") # We create a connected TCP socket. Note the trick with # setblocking(False) that prevents us from having to create a thread. lsock = socket(family, type, proto) try: lsock.bind((host, 0)) lsock.listen() addr, port = lsock.getsockname()[:2] csock = socket(family, type, proto) try: csock.setblocking(False) try: csock.connect((addr, port)) except (BlockingIOError, InterruptedError): pass csock.setblocking(True) ssock, _ = lsock.accept() except: csock.close() raise finally: lsock.close() return (ssock, csock) The implementation mentions that setblocking(False) is necessary to "prevent us from having to create a thread," but I can't seem to understand why this is required. I initially thought that omitting setblocking(False) could lead to a deadlock or blocking behavior, but after testing on both Linux and Windows, the code seems to work fine without it, and the connect call does not block. So my question is: What specific issue is setblocking(False) intended to solve here? Are there platform-specific scenarios or edge cases where the absence of setblocking(False) would cause problems? Any insight into this behavior would be greatly appreciated. Continue reading...