NAME
socketpair —
create a pair of connected
sockets
SYNOPSIS
#include
<sys/socket.h>
int
socketpair(int
d, int type,
int protocol,
int sv[2]);
DESCRIPTION
The
socketpair()
call creates an unnamed pair of connected sockets in the specified domain
d, of the specified type, and
using the optionally specified protocol. The
descriptors used in referencing the new sockets are returned in
sv[0] and sv[1]. The two sockets
are indistinguishable.
Any combination of the following flags may additionally be used in the type argument:
- SOCK_CLOEXEC
- Set close-on-exec flag on both the new descriptors.
- SOCK_NONBLOCK
- Set non-blocking I/O mode on both the new sockets.
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, the value 0 is returned; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.
ERRORS
The call succeeds unless:
- [
EAFNOSUPPORT] - The specified address family is not supported on this machine.
- [
EPROTONOSUPPORT] - The specified protocol is not supported on this machine.
- [
EOPNOTSUPP] - The specified protocol does not support creation of socket pairs.
- [
EPROTOTYPE] - The combination of the specified protocol and type is not supported.
- [
EMFILE] - The per-process descriptor table is full.
- [
ENFILE] - The system file table is full.
- [
ENOBUFS] - Insufficient resources were available in the system to perform the operation.
- [
EFAULT] - The address sv does not specify a valid part of the process address space.
SEE ALSO
STANDARDS
The socketpair() function conforms to
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (“POSIX.1”). The
SOCK_CLOEXEC and
SOCK_NONBLOCK flags are expected to conform to a
future revision of that standard.
HISTORY
The socketpair() function call appeared in
4.2BSD. Support for the
SOCK_CLOEXEC and
SOCK_NONBLOCK flags appeared in
OpenBSD 5.7.
BUGS
This call is currently implemented only for the LOCAL domain. Many
operating systems only accept a protocol of
AF_UNSPEC, so that should be used instead of
AF_LOCAL for maximal portability.