@facchinm@pennam

now this is my last essential PR for Mbed Core networking. It does changes proposed by Alessandro Ranellucci, but including the consequences

#750 adds accept() in WiFiServer

consequences:

• add accept in EthernetServer
• deprecateavailable
• modify examples to use accept() and remove Ethernet examples which require true server.available() (WiFi lib doesn't have them)
• remove unimplementedPrint inheritance andwrite methods, because print-to-all-clients is tied withserver.available()

#751 adds end() in WiFiServer

consequences:

• add end() in EthernetServer

other related server classes modernization as in WiFiS3:

• addbegin with parameterport and constructor without parameters
• add operator bool

Some context:

The server.available()originates in Processing. It is an idea to simplify a TCP server for artists. But as the lack of proper server.available() here and in multiple third party libraries shows, users not expect that behavior. In most request-response-stop use-cases it doesn't even matter.

Class Server inherits from Print for the print-to-all-clients functionality. This functionality is tied with the available() method implementation. The implementation of the Server class should register all connected clients for correct implementation of available() and for print-to-all-clients functionality.

The base class Server can't declare required server methods available() and accept(), because they have the return type of the specific Client implementation of the library (for example EthernetClient in the Ethernet library). As a consequence, It is not possible to use the base class Server to work with an instance of an inherited server class. So Server is just disguised Print and without Print usage inheriting from Server class is useless.

it is just a comment which is not true. it is same in the Ethernet library from where the example originates.
I guess it had Serial.write in " // check for incoming data from all clients" section at some point in time.

arduino-libraries/Ethernet@2304c69