POSIX Asynchronous I/O

POSIX asynchronous I/O is performed using aiocb structures. An aiocb control block identifies each asynchronous I/O request and contains all of the controlling information. A control block can be used for only one request at a time. A control block can be reused after its request has been completed.

A typical POSIX asynchronous I/O operation is initiated by a call to aio_read() or aio_write(). Either polling or signals can be used to determine the completion of an operation. If signals are used for completing operations, each operation can be uniquely tagged. The tag is then returned in the si_value component of the generated signal. For more information, see the siginfo(3HEAD) man page.

aio_read()

Is called with an asynchronous I/O control block to initiate a read operation.

aio_write()

Is called with an asynchronous I/O control block to initiate a write operation.

aio_return(), aio_error()

Are called to obtain return and error values, respectively, after an operation is known to have completed.

aio_cancel()

Is called with an asynchronous I/O control block to cancel pending operations. aio_cancel() can be used to cancel a specific request, if a request is specified by the control block. aio_cancel() can also cancel all of the requests that are pending for the specified file descriptor.

aio_fsync()

Queues an asynchronous fsync() or fdatasync() request for all of the pending I/O operations on the specified file.

aio_suspend()

Suspends the caller as though one or more of the preceding asynchronous I/O requests had been made synchronously.