The socket.socket (Python type) has a private _io_refs counter. close() does nothing until _io_refs reachs zero.

Maybe we can develop an API to temporary increase the _io_refs counter to prevent a real close?

Pseudo-code:

@contextlib.contextmanager
def dont_close_socket(sock):
    assert not sock._closed
    sock._io_refs += 1
    try:
        yield sock
    finally:
        sock._io_refs -= 1

It may be a context manager or a new object. It would probably be better to put in the socket.socke type, since it uses private attributes.