LISTEN(2) BSD System Calls Manual LISTEN(2)NAME
listen — listen for connections on a socket
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/socket.h>
int
listen(int s, int backlog);
DESCRIPTION
To accept connections, a socket is first created with socket(2), a will‐
ingness to accept incoming connections and a queue limit for incoming
connections are 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 may receive an error with an indication of ECONNREFUSED,
or, if the underlying protocol supports retransmission, the request may
be ignored so that retries may succeed.
RETURN VALUES
A 0 return value indicates success; -1 indicates an error.
ERRORSListen() will fail 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 opera‐
tion listen().
SEE ALSOaccept(2), connect(2), socket(2)BUGS
The backlog is currently limited (silently) to 128.
HISTORY
The listen() function call appeared in 4.2BSD.
4.2 Berkeley Distribution December 11, 1993 4.2 Berkeley Distribution