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NAME
select — synchronous I/O multiplexing
LIBRARY
Standard C Library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/select.h>
int
select(int nfds, fd_set *readfds, fd_set *writefds, fd_set *exceptfds, struct timeval *timeout);
FD_SET(fd, &fdset);
FD_CLR(fd, &fdset);
FD_ISSET(fd, &fdset);
FD_ZERO(&fdset);
DESCRIPTION
The select() system call examines the I/O descriptor sets whose addresses are passed in readfds, writefds,
and exceptfds to see if some of their descriptors are ready for reading, are ready for writing, or have an
exceptional condition pending, respectively. The only exceptional condition detectable is out-of-band data
received on a socket. The first nfds descriptors are checked in each set; i.e., the descriptors from 0
through nfds-1 in the descriptor sets are examined. On return, select() replaces the given descriptor sets
with subsets consisting of those descriptors that are ready for the requested operation. The select()
system call returns the total number of ready descriptors in all the sets.
The descriptor sets are stored as bit fields in arrays of integers. The following macros are provided for
manipulating such descriptor sets: FD_ZERO(&fdset) initializes a descriptor set fdset to the null set.
FD_SET(fd, &fdset) includes a particular descriptor fd in fdset. FD_CLR(fd, &fdset) removes fd from fdset.
FD_ISSET(fd, &fdset) is non-zero if fd is a member of fdset, zero otherwise. The behavior of these macros
is undefined if a descriptor value is less than zero or greater than or equal to FD_SETSIZE, which is
normally at least equal to the maximum number of descriptors supported by the system.
If timeout is not a null pointer, it specifies the maximum interval to wait for the selection to complete.
System activity can lengthen the interval by an indeterminate amount.
If timeout is a null pointer, the select blocks indefinitely.
To effect a poll, the timeout argument should not be a null pointer, but it should point to a zero-valued
timeval structure.
Any of readfds, writefds, and exceptfds may be given as null pointers if no descriptors are of interest.
RETURN VALUES
The select() system call returns the number of ready descriptors that are contained in the descriptor sets,
or -1 if an error occurred. If the time limit expires, select() returns 0. If select() returns with an
error, including one due to an interrupted system call, the descriptor sets will be unmodified.
ERRORS
An error return from select() indicates:
[EBADF] One of the descriptor sets specified an invalid descriptor.
[EFAULT] One of the arguments readfds, writefds, exceptfds, or timeout points to an invalid
address.
[EINTR] A signal was delivered before the time limit expired and before any of the selected
events occurred.
[EINVAL] The specified time limit is invalid. One of its components is negative or too large.
[EINVAL] The nfds argument was invalid.
SEE ALSO
accept(2), connect(2), getdtablesize(2), gettimeofday(2), kqueue(2), poll(2), pselect(2), read(2), recv(2), send(2), write(2), clocks(7)
NOTES
The default size of FD_SETSIZE is currently 1024. In order to accommodate programs which might potentially
use a larger number of open files with select(), it is possible to increase this size by having the program
define FD_SETSIZE before the inclusion of any header which includes <sys/types.h>.
If nfds is greater than the number of open files, select() is not guaranteed to examine the unused file
descriptors. For historical reasons, select() will always examine the first 256 descriptors.
STANDARDS
The select() system call and FD_CLR(), FD_ISSET(), FD_SET(), and FD_ZERO() macros conform with IEEE Std
1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
The select() system call appeared in 4.2BSD.
BUGS
Version 2 of the Single UNIX Specification (“SUSv2”) allows systems to modify the original timeout in
place. Thus, it is unwise to assume that the timeout value will be unmodified by the select() system call.
FreeBSD does not modify the return value, which can cause problems for applications ported from other
systems.