What is the Difference Between read() and recv() , and Between send() and write()?

c sockets unix network-programming posix
Sajad Bahmani picture Sajad Bahmani · Nov 24, 2009 · Viewed 102.1k times · Source

What is the difference between read() and recv(), and between send() and write() in socket programming in terms of performances, speed and other behaviors?

Answer

Gonzalo picture Gonzalo · Nov 24, 2009

The difference is that recv()/send() work only on socket descriptors and let you specify certain options for the actual operation. Those functions are slightly more specialized (for instance, you can set a flag to ignore SIGPIPE, or to send out-of-band messages...).

Functions read()/write() are the universal file descriptor functions working on all descriptors.

Related questions

UNIX nonblocking I/O: O_NONBLOCK vs. FIONBIO

In every example and discussion I run across in the context of BSD socket programming, it seems that the recommended way to set a file descriptor to nonblocking I/O mode is using the O_NONBLOCK flag to fcntl(), e.…

Read More
What can cause a “Resource temporarily unavailable” on sock send() command

What can cause a Resource temporarily unavailable error on a socket send() command? The socket is setup as AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM. It works most of the time, but occasionally gets this error. The receiving end of the socket appears …

Read More
Turn a simple socket into an SSL socket

I wrote simple C programs, which are using sockets ('client' and 'server'). (UNIX/Linux usage) The server side simply creates a socket: sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0); And then binds it to sockaddr: bind(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *) &serv_…

Read More