How do I use Socket.select?

[Anonymouse]

I've been using blocking Sockets with timeouts for a while now, 
but wherever I look the word is "do consider using a non-blocking 
socket". Even the docs for std.socket.setOption;

> In a typical application, you might also want to consider using 
> a non-blocking socket instead of setting a timeout on a 
> blocking one.

So I'm trying to wrap my head around select but I can't get it to 
work in any way that's better than my current blocking reads.

A SocketSet is a bundle of Sockets that you can add to and remove 
from, but you can't index. They're just there but out of reach.

A call to Socket.select(SocketSet readers, SocketSet writers, 
SocketSet error) *blocks* (unless supplied a timeout), and when 
something happens returns a number telling you how many sockets 
changed status, but not which.

The Sockets of those three SocketSets now magically disassociated 
themselves if they weren't one of those that changed status. You 
then have to call {readers,writers,error}.isSet(mySocket) and 
manually delve which one is still in there, and by extension, 
which one did change.

But a "status change" for a reading Socket is "stuff can now 
connect", for a writing one "connection established", and not 
sure about the error ones. It doesn't seem to be "there's data 
waiting to be read" which I'd hoped for, since my program (IRC 
bot) in essence connects once and stays such throughout its life.

What else is there to select that I'm missing? Or is it mostly a 
thing for programs with lots of Sockets, lots of connections?