Hey! Socket programming got you down? Is this stuff just a little too difficult to figure out from the man pages? You want to do cool Internet programming, but you don’t have time to wade through a gob of struct s trying to figure out if you have to call bind() before you connect(), etc., etc. Well, guess what! I’ve already done this nasty business, and I’m dying to share the information with everyone! You’ve come to the right place. This document should give the average competent C programmer the edge s/he needs to get a grip on this networking noise.

This document has been written as a tutorial, not a reference. It is probably at its best when read by individuals who are just starting out with socket programming and are looking for a foothold. It is certainly not the complete guide to sockets programming, by any means. Hopefully, though, it’ll be just enough for those man pages to start making sense.

The code contained within this document was compiled on a Linux PC using Gnu’s gcc compiler. It should, however, build on just about any platform that uses gcc. Naturally, this doesn’t apply if you’re programming for Windows–see the section on Windows programming, below.

Download pdf Beej’s Guide to Network Programming Using Internet Sockets