Provided by: tcl8.4-doc_8.4.20-8_all 
NAME
socket - Open a TCP network connection
SYNOPSIS
socket ?options? host port
socket -server command ?options? port
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DESCRIPTION
This command opens a network socket and returns a channel identifier that may be used in
future invocations of commands like read, puts and flush. At present only the TCP network
protocol is supported; future releases may include support for additional protocols. The
socket command may be used to open either the client or server side of a connection,
depending on whether the -server switch is specified.
Note that the default encoding for all sockets is the system encoding, as returned by
encoding system. Most of the time, you will need to use fconfigure to alter this to
something else, such as utf-8 (ideal for communicating with other Tcl processes) or
iso8859-1 (useful for many network protocols, especially the older ones).
CLIENT SOCKETS
If the -server option is not specified, then the client side of a connection is opened and
the command returns a channel identifier that can be used for both reading and writing.
Port and host specify a port to connect to; there must be a server accepting connections
on this port. Port is an integer port number (or service name, where supported and
understood by the host operating system) and host is either a domain-style name such as
www.tcl.tk or a numerical IP address such as 127.0.0.1. Use localhost to refer to the
host on which the command is invoked.
The following options may also be present before host to specify additional information
about the connection:
-myaddr addr
Addr gives the domain-style name or numerical IP address of the client-side network
interface to use for the connection. This option may be useful if the client
machine has multiple network interfaces. If the option is omitted then the client-
side interface will be chosen by the system software.
-myport port
Port specifies an integer port number (or service name, where supported and
understood by the host operating system) to use for the client's side of the
connection. If this option is omitted, the client's port number will be chosen at
random by the system software.
-async The -async option will cause the client socket to be connected asynchronously. This
means that the socket will be created immediately but may not yet be connected to
the server, when the call to socket returns. When a gets or flush is done on the
socket before the connection attempt succeeds or fails, if the socket is in
blocking mode, the operation will wait until the connection is completed or fails.
If the socket is in nonblocking mode and a gets or flush is done on the socket
before the connection attempt succeeds or fails, the operation returns immediately
and fblocked on the socket returns 1.
SERVER SOCKETS
If the -server option is specified then the new socket will be a server for the port given
by port (either an integer or a service name, where supported and understood by the host
operating system; if port is zero, the operating system will allocate a free port to the
server socket which may be discovered by using fconfigure to read the -sockname option).
Tcl will automatically accept connections to the given port. For each connection Tcl will
create a new channel that may be used to communicate with the client. Tcl then invokes
command with three additional arguments: the name of the new channel, the address, in
network address notation, of the client's host, and the client's port number.
The following additional option may also be specified before host:
-myaddr addr
Addr gives the domain-style name or numerical IP address of the server-side network
interface to use for the connection. This option may be useful if the server
machine has multiple network interfaces. If the option is omitted then the server
socket is bound to the special address INADDR_ANY so that it can accept connections
from any interface.
Server channels cannot be used for input or output; their sole use is to accept new client
connections. The channels created for each incoming client connection are opened for input
and output. Closing the server channel shuts down the server so that no new connections
will be accepted; however, existing connections will be unaffected.
Server sockets depend on the Tcl event mechanism to find out when new connections are
opened. If the application doesn't enter the event loop, for example by invoking the
vwait command or calling the C procedure Tcl_DoOneEvent, then no connections will be
accepted.
If port is specified as zero, the operating system will allocate an unused port for use as
a server socket. The port number actually allocated may be retrieved from the created
server socket using the fconfigure command to retrieve the -sockname option as described
below.
CONFIGURATION OPTIONS
The fconfigure command can be used to query several readonly configuration options for
socket channels:
-error This option gets the current error status of the given socket. This is useful when
you need to determine if an asynchronous connect operation succeeded. If there was
an error, the error message is returned. If there was no error, an empty string is
returned.
-sockname
This option returns a list of three elements, the address, the host name and the
port number for the socket. If the host name cannot be computed, the second element
is identical to the address, the first element of the list.
-peername
This option is not supported by server sockets. For client and accepted sockets,
this option returns a list of three elements; these are the address, the host name
and the port to which the peer socket is connected or bound. If the host name
cannot be computed, the second element of the list is identical to the address, its
first element.
EXAMPLES
Here is a very simple time server:
proc Server {channel clientaddr clientport} {
puts "Connection from $clientaddr registered"
puts $channel [clock format [clock seconds]]
close $channel
}
socket -server Server 9900
vwait forever
And here is the corresponding client to talk to the server:
set server localhost
set sockChan [socket $server 9900]
gets $sockChan line
close $sockChan
puts "The time on $server is $line"
SEE ALSO
fconfigure(3tcl), flush(3tcl), open(3tcl), read(3tcl)
KEYWORDS
bind, channel, connection, domain name, host, network address, socket, tcp