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accept(2)

NAME

     accept -- accept a connection on a socket

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

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

     int
     accept(int s, struct sockaddr * restrict addr,
	 socklen_t * restrict 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() system call extracts the first connection
     request on the queue of pending connections, creates a new socket, and
     allocates a new file descriptor for the socket which inherits the state
     of the O_NONBLOCK property from the original socket s.

     If no pending connections are present on the queue, and the original
     socket is not marked as non-blocking, accept() blocks the caller until a
     connection is present.  If the original 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 argument that is filled-in with the address
     of the connecting entity, as known to the communications layer.  The
     exact format of the addr argument is determined by the domain in which
     the communication is occurring.  A null pointer may be specified for addr
     if the address information is not desired; in this case, addrlen is not
     used and should also be null.  Otherwise, the addrlen argument is a
     value-result argument; 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) 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 dequeueing 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.

     For some applications, performance may be enhanced by using an
     accept_filter(9) to pre-process incoming connections.

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

     [ENFILE]		The system file table is full.

     [ENOTSOCK] 	The descriptor references a file, not a socket.

     [EINVAL]		listen(2) has not been called on the socket descrip-
			tor.

     [EFAULT]		The addr argument 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.

     [ECONNABORTED]	A connection arrived, but it was closed while waiting
			on the listen queue.

SEE ALSO

     bind(2), connect(2), getpeername(2), listen(2), select(2), socket(2),
     accept_filter(9)

HISTORY

     The accept() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.

FreeBSD 5.4		       December 11, 1993		   FreeBSD 5.4

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