ACCEPT(2) BSD System Calls Manual ACCEPT(2)
NAME
accept - accept a connection on a socket
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
int
accept(int s, struct sockaddr *addr, socklen_t *addrlen);
DESCRIPTION
The argument s is a socket that has been created with socket(2), bound to
an address with bind(2), and is listening for connections after a
listen(2). The accept() argument extracts the first connection request
on the queue of pending connections, creates a new socket with the same
properties of s, and allocates a new file descriptor for the socket. If
no pending connections are present on the queue, and the socket is not
marked as non-blocking, accept() blocks the caller until a connection is
present. If the socket is marked non-blocking and no pending connections
are present on the queue, accept() returns an error as described below.
The accepted socket may not be used to accept more connections. The
original socket s remains open.
The argument addr is a result parameter that is filled in with the
address of the connecting entity as known to the communications layer.
The exact format of the addr parameter is determined by the domain in
which the communication is occurring. The addrlen is a value-result
parameter; it should initially contain the amount of space pointed to by
addr; on return it will contain the actual length (in bytes) of the
address returned. This call is used with connection-based socket types,
currently with SOCK_STREAM.
It is possible to select(2) or poll(2) a socket for the purposes of doing
an accept() by selecting it for read.
For certain protocols which require an explicit confirmation, such as ISO
or DATAKIT, accept() can be thought of as merely dequeuing the next con-
nection request and not implying confirmation. Confirmation can be
implied by a normal read or write on the new file descriptor, and rejec-
tion can be implied by closing the new socket.
One can obtain user connection request data without confirming the con-
nection by issuing a recvmsg(2) call with an msg_iovlen of 0 and a non-
zero msg_controllen, or by issuing a getsockopt(2) request. Similarly,
one can provide user connection rejection information by issuing a
sendmsg(2) call with providing only the control information, or by call-
ing setsockopt(2).
RETURN VALUES
The call returns -1 on error. If it succeeds, it returns a non-negative
integer that is a descriptor for the accepted socket.
ERRORS
The accept() will fail if:
[EBADF] The descriptor is invalid.
[ENOTSOCK] The descriptor references a file, not a socket.
[EOPNOTSUPP] The referenced socket is not of type SOCK_STREAM.
[EINVAL] The referenced socket is not listening for connections
(that is, listen(2) has not yet been called).
[EFAULT] The addr parameter is not in a writable part of the
user address space.
[EWOULDBLOCK] The socket is marked non-blocking and no connections
are present to be accepted.
[EMFILE] The per-process descriptor table is full.
[ENFILE] The system file table is full.
[ECONNABORTED] A connection has been aborted.
SEE ALSO
bind(2), connect(2), listen(2), poll(2), select(2), poll(2), socket(2)
HISTORY
The accept() function appeared in 4.2BSD.
BSD February 15, 1999 BSD
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