SEND(2) — SYSTEM CALLS

NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>

cc = send(s, msg, len, flags)
int cc, s;
char ∗msg;
int len, flags;

cc = sendto(s, msg, len, flags, to, tolen)
int cc, s;
char ∗msg;
int len, flags;
struct sockaddr ∗to;
int tolen;

cc = sendmsg(s, msg, flags)
int cc, s;
struct msghdr msg[];
int flags;

DESCRIPTION

S is a socket created with socket(2). Send, sendto, and sendmsg are used to transmit a message to another socket. Send may be used only when the socket is in a connected state, while sendto and sendmsg may be used at any time.

The address of the target is given by to with tolen specifying its size. The length of the message is given by len. If the message is too long to pass atomically through the underlying protocol, then the error EMSGSIZE is returned, and the message is not transmitted.

No indication of failure to deliver is implicit in a send. Return values of −1 indicate some locally detected errors.

If no messages space is available at the socket to hold the message to be transmitted, then send normally blocks, unless the socket has been placed in non-blocking i/o mode. The select(2) call may be used to determine when it is possible to send more data.

The flags parameter may be set to SOF_OOB to send “out-of-band” data on sockets which support this notion (e.g. SOCK_STREAM).

See recv(2) for a description of the msghdr structure.

RETURN VALUE

The call returns the number of characters sent, or −1 if an error occurred.

ERRORS

[EBADF] An invalid descriptor was specified.

[ENOTSOCK] The argument s is not a socket.

[EFAULT] An invalid user space address was specified for a parameter.

[EMSGSIZE] The socket requires that message be sent atomically, and the size of the message to be sent made this impossible.

[EWOULDBLOCK] The socket is marked non-blocking and the requested operation would block.

Museum