NAME

listen − listen for connections on a socket

SYNOPSIS

int listen(s, backlog)
int s, backlog;

DESCRIPTION

To accept connections, a socket is first created with socket(2), a backlog for incoming connections is specified with listen() and then the connections are accepted with accept(2).  The listen() call applies only to sockets of type SOCK_STREAM or SOCK_SEQPACKET.

The backlog parameter defines the maximum length the queue of pending connections may grow to.  If a connection request arrives with the queue full the client will receive an error with an indication of ECONNREFUSED. 

RETURN VALUES

listen() returns:

0 on success. 

−1 on failure and sets errno to indicate the error. 

ERRORS

EBADF s is not a valid descriptor. 

ENOTSOCK s is not a socket. 

EOPNOTSUPP The socket is not of a type that supports listen(). 

SEE ALSO

accept(2), connect(2), socket(2)

BUGS

The backlog is currently limited (silently) to 5. 

Solbourne Computer, Inc.  —  12 Dec 1990