C Socket Library: Usage Guide

In C programming, the socket library can be used to conduct network programming and facilitate communication between different hosts. The main steps are as follows:

1. Create a socket: use the socket function to create a socket descriptor, specifying the protocol family, socket type, and protocol.
2. Binding socket: using the bind function to connect the socket descriptor to a local address.
3. Listening for connections (optional): If it is a server, call the listen function to listen for connection requests.
4. Accept connection (optional): If it is a server-side operation, call the accept function to accept the client’s connection request and return a new socket descriptor for communication.
5. Connect to remote host: For clients, use the connect function to establish a connection with the remote host.
6. Transmitting and receiving data: using the send and receive functions to send and receive data.
7. Close connection: use the close function to close the connection.

It should be noted that in network programming, it may involve the use of multithreading or multiprocessing to handle multiple connections or tasks simultaneously. Additionally, when dealing with data, one must consider the issues of data sticking and splitting, where data sent in one transmission may be divided into multiple packets at the receiving end, or data sent multiple times may be merged into one packet at the receiving end. Therefore, it is necessary to design appropriate protocols to address these issues.