(libc.info.gz) Sockets
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16 Sockets
**********
This chapter describes the GNU facilities for interprocess communication
using sockets.
A "socket" is a generalized interprocess communication channel. Like
a pipe, a socket is represented as a file descriptor. Unlike pipes
sockets support communication between unrelated processes, and even
between processes running on different machines that communicate over a
network. Sockets are the primary means of communicating with other
machines; 'telnet', 'rlogin', 'ftp', 'talk' and the other familiar
network programs use sockets.
Not all operating systems support sockets. In the GNU C Library, the
header file 'sys/socket.h' exists regardless of the operating system,
and the socket functions always exist, but if the system does not really
support sockets these functions always fail.
*Incomplete:* We do not currently document the facilities for
broadcast messages or for configuring Internet interfaces. The
reentrant functions and some newer functions that are related to IPv6
aren't documented either so far.
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* Socket Concepts Basic concepts you need to know about.
* Communication StylesStream communication, datagrams and other styles.
* Socket Addresses How socket names ("addresses") work.
* Interface Naming Identifying specific network interfaces.
* Local Namespace Details about the local namespace.
* Internet Namespace Details about the Internet namespace.
* Misc Namespaces Other namespaces not documented fully here.
* Open/Close Sockets Creating sockets and destroying them.
* Connections Operations on sockets with connection state.
* Datagrams Operations on datagram sockets.
* Inetd Inetd is a daemon that starts servers on request.
The most convenient way to write a server
is to make it work with Inetd.
* Socket Options Miscellaneous low-level socket options.
* Networks Database Accessing the database of network names.
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