Manual pages › Network library (3N)
listen(3N)
listen for connections on a socket
From the original Amiga UNIX 2.1 manual. Some things it mentions may not be in this release.
Also by this name: listen(1M), System administration commands
NAME
listen - listen for connections on a socket
SYNOPSIS
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 VALUE
A 0 return value indicates success; -1 indicates an error.
ERRORS
The call fails if:
EBADF The argument s is not a valid descriptor.
ENOTSOCK The argument s is not a socket.
EOPNOTSUPP The socket is not of a type that supports the operation listen.
NOTES
There is currently no backlog limit.