Data Transfer

This section describes the interfaces to send and receive data. You can send or receive a message with the read() and write() interfaces as follows:

write(s, buf, sizeof buf);
read(s,  buf, sizeof buf);

You can also use send() and recv().

send(s, buf, sizeof buf, flags);
recv(s, buf, sizeof buf, flags);

send() and recv() are similar to read() and write(), but the flags argument is required. The flags argument, which is defined in sys/socket.h, can be specified as a nonzero value if one or more of the following is required:

MSG_OOB

Send and receive out-of-band data

MSG_PEEK

Look at data without reading

MSG_DONTROUTE

Send data without routing packets

Out-of-band data is specific to stream sockets. When MSG_PEEK is specified with a recv() call, any data present is returned to the user, but treated as still unread. The next read() or recv() call on the socket returns the same data. The option to send data without routing packets applied to the outgoing packets is currently used only by the routing table management process.

For more information, see the read(2), write(2), send(3C), and recv(3C) man pages.