.\" $OpenBSD: recv.2,v 1.34 2005/07/04 05:02:15 jaredy Exp $ .\" $NetBSD: recv.2,v 1.6 1995/02/27 12:36:08 cgd Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1983, 1990, 1991, 1993 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" @(#)recv.2 8.3 (Berkeley) 2/21/94 .\" .Dd February 15, 1999 .Dt RECV 2 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm recv , .Nm recvfrom , .Nm recvmsg .Nd receive a message from a socket .Sh SYNOPSIS .Fd #include .Fd #include .Ft ssize_t .Fn recv "int s" "void *buf" "size_t len" "int flags" .Ft ssize_t .Fn recvfrom "int s" "void *buf" "size_t len" "int flags" "struct sockaddr *from" "socklen_t *fromlen" .Ft ssize_t .Fn recvmsg "int s" "struct msghdr *msg" "int flags" .Sh DESCRIPTION .Fn recvfrom and .Fn recvmsg are used to receive messages from a socket, .Fa s , and may be used to receive data on a socket whether or not it is connection-oriented. .Pp If .Fa from is non-null and the socket is not connection-oriented, the source address of the message is filled in. .Fa fromlen is a value-result parameter, initialized to the size of the buffer associated with .Fa from , and modified on return to indicate the actual size of the address stored there. .Pp The .Fn recv call is normally used only on a .Em connected socket (see .Xr connect 2 ) and is identical to .Fn recvfrom with a null .Fa from parameter. As it is redundant, it may not be supported in future releases. .Pp On successful completion, all three routines return the number of message bytes read. If a message is too long to fit in the supplied buffer, excess bytes may be discarded depending on the type of socket the message is received from (see .Xr socket 2 ) . .Pp If no messages are available at the socket, the receive call waits for a message to arrive, unless the socket is nonblocking (see .Xr fcntl 2 ) in which case the value \-1 is returned and the external variable .Va errno set to .Er EAGAIN . The receive calls normally return any data available, up to the requested amount, rather than waiting for receipt of the full amount requested; this behavior is affected by the socket-level options .Dv SO_RCVLOWAT and .Dv SO_RCVTIMEO described in .Xr getsockopt 2 . .Pp The .Xr select 2 or .Xr poll 2 system calls may be used to determine when more data arrive. .Pp The .Fa flags argument to a recv call is formed by .Tn OR Ns ing one or more of the values: .Pp .Bl -tag -width "MSG_DONTWAITXX" -offset indent -compact .It Dv MSG_OOB process out-of-band data .It Dv MSG_PEEK peek at incoming message .It Dv MSG_WAITALL wait for full request or error .It Dv MSG_DONTWAIT don't block .El .Pp The .Dv MSG_OOB flag requests receipt of out-of-band data that would not be received in the normal data stream. Some protocols place expedited data at the head of the normal data queue, and thus this flag cannot be used with such protocols. The .Dv MSG_PEEK flag causes the receive operation to return data from the beginning of the receive queue without removing that data from the queue. Thus, a subsequent receive call will return the same data. The .Dv MSG_WAITALL flag requests that the operation block until the full request is satisfied. However, the call may still return less data than requested if a signal is caught, an error or disconnect occurs, or the next data to be received is of a different type than that returned. The .Dv MSG_DONTWAIT flag requests the call to return when it would block otherwise. If no data is available, .Va errno is set to .Er EAGAIN . This flag is not available in strict ANSI or C99 compilation mode. .Pp The .Fn recvmsg call uses a .Fa msghdr structure to minimize the number of directly supplied parameters. This structure has the following form, as defined in .Aq Pa sys/socket.h : .Bd -literal struct msghdr { void *msg_name; /* optional address */ socklen_t msg_namelen; /* size of address */ struct iovec *msg_iov; /* scatter/gather array */ unsigned int msg_iovlen; /* # elements in msg_iov */ void *msg_control; /* ancillary data, see below */ socklen_t msg_controllen; /* ancillary data buffer len */ int msg_flags; /* flags on received message */ }; .Ed .Pp Here .Fa msg_name and .Fa msg_namelen specify the source address if the socket is unconnected; .Fa msg_name may be given as a null pointer if no names are desired or required. .Fa msg_iov and .Fa msg_iovlen describe scatter gather locations, as discussed in .Xr read 2 . .Fa msg_control , which has length .Fa msg_controllen , points to a buffer for other protocol control related messages or other miscellaneous ancillary data. The messages are of the form: .Bd -literal struct cmsghdr { socklen_t cmsg_len; /* data byte count, including hdr */ int cmsg_level; /* originating protocol */ int cmsg_type; /* protocol-specific type */ /* followed by u_char cmsg_data[]; */ }; .Ed .Pp See .Xr CMSG_DATA 3 for how these messages are constructed and decomposed. .Pp As an example, one could use this to learn of changes in the data-stream in XNS/SPP. .Pp Open file descriptors are now passed as ancillary data for .Dv AF_UNIX domain and .Xr socketpair 2 sockets, with .Fa cmsg_level set to .Dv SOL_SOCKET and .Fa cmsg_type set to .Dv SCM_RIGHTS . .Pp The .Fa msg_flags field is set on return according to the message received. It will contain zero or more of the following values: .Pp .Bl -tag -width MSG_CTRUNC -offset indent -compact .It Dv MSG_OOB Returned to indicate that expedited or out-of-band data was received. .It Dv MSG_EOR Indicates end-of-record; the data returned completed a record (generally used with sockets of type .Dv SOCK_SEQPACKET ) . .It Dv MSG_TRUNC Indicates that the trailing portion of a datagram was discarded because the datagram was larger than the buffer supplied. .It Dv MSG_CTRUNC Indicates that some control data were discarded due to lack of space in the buffer for ancillary data. .It Dv MSG_BCAST Indicates that the packet was received as broadcast. .It Dv MSG_MCAST Indicates that the packet was received as multicast. .El .Sh RETURN VALUES These calls return the number of bytes received, or \-1 if an error occurred. .Sh ERRORS .Fn recv , .Fn recvfrom , and .Fn recvmsg fail if: .Bl -tag -width "[EHOSTUNREACH]" .It Bq Er EBADF The argument .Fa s is an invalid descriptor. .It Bq Er ENOTCONN The socket is associated with a connection-oriented protocol and has not been connected (see .Xr connect 2 and .Xr accept 2 ) . .It Bq Er ENOTSOCK The argument .Fa s does not refer to a socket. .It Bq Er EAGAIN The socket is marked non-blocking, and the receive operation would block, or a receive timeout had been set, and the timeout expired before data were received. .It Bq Er EINTR The receive was interrupted by delivery of a signal before any data were available. .It Bq Er EFAULT The receive buffer pointer(s) point outside the process's address space. .It Bq Er EHOSTUNREACH A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable host. .It Bq Er EHOSTDOWN A socket operation failed because the destination host was down. .It Bq Er ENETDOWN A socket operation encountered a dead network. .El .Pp In addition, .Fn recv and .Fn recvfrom may return the following error: .Bl -tag -width Er .It Bq Er EINVAL .Fa len was larger than .Dv SSIZE_MAX . .El .Pp Also, .Fn recv may return the following error: .Bl -tag -width "[ECONNREFUSED]" .It Bq Er ECONNREFUSED The socket is associated with a connection-oriented protocol and the connection was forcefully rejected (see .Xr connect 2 ) . .El .Pp And .Fn recvmsg may return one of the following errors: .Bl -tag -width Er .It Bq Er EINVAL The sum of the .Fa iov_len values in the .Fa msg_iov array overflowed an .Em ssize_t . .It Bq Er EMSGSIZE The .Fa msg_iovlen member of .Fa msg was less than 0 or larger than .Dv IOV_MAX . .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr connect 2 , .Xr fcntl 2 , .Xr getsockopt 2 , .Xr poll 2 , .Xr read 2 , .Xr select 2 , .Xr socket 2 , .Xr socketpair 2 , .Xr CMSG_DATA 3 .Sh HISTORY The .Fn recv function call appeared in .Bx 4.2 .