Sockets Overview

This section describes the characteristic of sockets.

In the operating system, sockets have the following characteristics:

• A socket exists only as long as a process holds a descriptor referring to it.
• Sockets are referenced by file descriptors and have qualities similar to those of a character special device. Read, write, and select operations can be performed on sockets by using the appropriate subroutines.
• Sockets can be created in pairs, given names, or used to rendezvous with other sockets in a communication domain, accepting connections from these sockets or exchanging messages with them.