This example made everything clear for me:
As you can see setSoTimeout prevent the program to hang! It wait for SO_TIMEOUT time! if it does not get any signal it throw exception! It means that time expired!
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.net.SocketTimeoutException;
public class SocketTest extends Thread {
private ServerSocket serverSocket;
public SocketTest() throws IOException {
serverSocket = new ServerSocket(8008);
serverSocket.setSoTimeout(10000);
}
public void run() {
while (true) {
try {
System.out.println("Waiting for client on port " + serverSocket.getLocalPort() + "...");
Socket client = serverSocket.accept();
System.out.println("Just connected to " + client.getRemoteSocketAddress());
client.close();
} catch (SocketTimeoutException s) {
System.out.println("Socket timed out!");
break;
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
break;
}
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
Thread t = new SocketTest();
t.start();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}