Tribblix: manual page: send.3socket

SEND(3SOCKET) Sockets Library Functions SEND(3SOCKET)

NAME

send, sendto, sendmsg - send a message from a socket

SYNOPSIS

cc [ flag... ] file... -lsocket -lnsl [ library... ]
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>

ssize_t send(int s, const void *msg, size_t len, int flags);

ssize_t sendto(int s, const void *msg, size_t len, int flags,
const struct sockaddr *to, int tolen);

ssize_t sendmsg(int s, const struct msghdr *msg, int flags);

DESCRIPTION

The send(), sendto(), and sendmsg() functions are used to transmit a
message to another transport end-point. The send() function can be
used only when the socket is in a connected state. See
connect(3SOCKET). The sendto() and sendmsg() functions can be used at
any time. The s socket is created with socket(3SOCKET).

The address of the target is supplied by to with a tolen parameter
used to specify the size. The length of the message is supplied by
the len parameter. For socket types such as SOCK_DGRAM and SOCK_RAW
that require atomic messages, the error EMSGSIZE is returned and the
message is not transmitted when it is too long to pass atomically
through the underlying protocol. The same restrictions do not apply
to SOCK_STREAM sockets.

A return value -1 indicates locally detected errors. It does not
imply a delivery failure.

If the socket does not have enough buffer space available to hold a
message, the send() function blocks the message, unless the socket
has been placed in non-blocking I/O mode (see fcntl(2)). The
select(3C) or poll(2) call can be used to determine when it is
possible to send more data.

The flags parameter is formed from the bitwise OR of zero or more of
the following:

MSG_OOB
Send out-of-band data on sockets that support this
notion. The underlying protocol must also support
out-of-band data. Only SOCK_STREAM sockets created
in the AF_INET or the AF_INET6 address family
support out-of-band data.

MSG_DONTROUTE
The SO_DONTROUTE option is turned on for the
duration of the operation. It is used only by
diagnostic or routing programs.

MSG_NOSIGNAL
Don't generate the SIGPIPE signal when a stream-
oriented socket is no longer connected.

The sendmsg() function call uses a msghdr structure defined in
<sys/socket.h> to minimize the number of directly supplied
parameters.

RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, these functions return the number of
bytes sent. Otherwise, they return -1 and set errno to indicate the
error.

ERRORS

In addition to the errors documented below, an asynchronous error
generated by the underlying socket protocol may be returned. For the
full list of errors, please see the corresponding socket protocol
manual page. For example, for a list of TCP errors, please see
tcp(4P).

The send(), sendto(), and sendmsg() functions return errors under the
following conditions:

EBADF
s is not a valid file descriptor.

ECONNRESET
The s argument refers to a connection oriented socket
and the connection was forcibly closed by the peer
and is no longer valid. I/O can no longer be
performed to filedes.

EINTR
The operation was interrupted by delivery of a signal
before any data could be buffered to be sent.

EMSGSIZE
The message is too large to be sent all at once (as
the socket requires), or the msg_iovlen member of the
msghdr structure pointed to by message is less than
or equal to 0 or is greater than {IOV_MAX}.

ENOMEM
Insufficient memory is available to complete the
operation.

ENOSR
Insufficient STREAMS resources are available for the
operation to complete.

ENOTSOCK
s is not a socket.

EWOULDBLOCK
The socket is marked non-blocking and the requested
operation would block. EWOULDBLOCK is also returned
when sufficient memory is not immediately available
to allocate a suitable buffer. In such a case, the
operation can be retried later.

ECONNREFUSED
The requested connection was refused by the peer. For
connected IPv4 and IPv6 datagram sockets, this
indicates that the system received an ICMP
Destination Port Unreachable message from the peer in
response to some prior transmission.

The send() and sendto() functions return errors under the following
conditions:

EINVAL
The len argument overflows a ssize_t.

Inconsistent port attributes for system call.

The sendto() function returns errors under the following conditions:

EINVAL
The value specified for the tolen parameter is not the size
of a valid address for the specified address family.

EISCON
A destination address was specified and the socket is
already connected.

The sendmsg() function returns errors under the following conditions:

EINVAL
The msg_iovlen member of the msghdr structure pointed to by
msg is less than or equal to 0, or the sum of the iov_len
values in the msg_iov array overflows a ssize_t.

One of the iov_len values in the msg_iov array member of
the msghdr structure pointed to by msg is negative, or the
sum of the iov_len values in the msg_iov array overflows a
ssize_t.

msg_iov contents are inconsistent with port attributes.

The send() function returns errors under the following conditions:

EPIPE
The socket is shut down for writing, or the socket is
connection-mode and is no longer connected. In the latter
case, if the socket is of type SOCK_STREAM, the SIGPIPE
signal is generated to the calling thread unless the
MSG_NOSIGNAL flag is set.