How does paramiko Channel.recv() exactly work?

Question

I\'m having a hard time understanding how the recv() function works.

http://docs.paramiko.org/en/1.13/api/channel.html#paramiko.channel.Channel.recv

Answer 1

Channel recv() corresponds to a socket.recv(), it does not have any specific structure or size, it just reads whatever data was sent from the remote server, not exceeding maxBytes.

You commonly use recv() in a loop until you get a piece of data that you are waiting for:

def _wait_for_data(self, options, verbose=False):
    chan = self.chan
    data = ""
    while True:
        x = chan.recv(1024)
        if len(x) == 0:
            self.log("*** Connection terminated\r")
            sys.exit(3)
        data += x
        if verbose:
            sys.stdout.write(x)
            sys.stdout.flush()
        for i in range(len(options)):
            if re.search(options[i], data):
                return i
    return -1