What is the functionality of setSoTimeout and how it works?

Question

I\'m trying to learn Socket by myself. I\'m little bit confused by following text from Oracle website. I have some questions regarding that. Thanks in advance for any clear

Answer 1

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();
    }
  }
}