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You are here: manpages

SENDFILE

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (2)
Updated: 2004-12-17
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

sendfile - transfer data between file descriptors

SYNOPSIS

#include <sys/sendfile.h>

ssize_t sendfile(int out_fd, int in_fd, off_t *offset, size_t count);

DESCRIPTION

sendfile() copies data between one file descriptor and another. Because this copying is done within the kernel, sendfile() is more efficient than the combination of read(2) and write(2), which would require transferring data to and from user space.

in_fd should be a file descriptor opened for reading and out_fd should be a descriptor opened for writing.

If offset is not NULL, then it points to a variable holding the file offset from which sendfile() will start reading data from in_fd. When sendfile() returns, this variable will be set to the offset of the byte following the last byte that was read. If offset is not NULL, then sendfile() does not modify the current file offset of in_fd; otherwise the current file offset is adjusted to reflect the number of bytes read from in_fd.

count is the number of bytes to copy between the file descriptors.

Presently (Linux 2.6.9): in_fd, must correspond to a file which supports mmap(2)-like operations (i.e., it cannot be a socket); and out_fd must refer to a socket.

Applications may wish to fall back to read(2)/write(2) in the case where sendfile() fails with EINVAL or ENOSYS.

RETURN VALUE

If the transfer was successful, the number of bytes written to out_fd is returned. On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

EAGAIN: Non-blocking I/O has been selected using O_NONBLOCK and the write would block.
EBADF: The input file was not opened for reading or the output file was not opened for writing.
EFAULT: Bad address.
EINVAL: Descriptor is not valid or locked, or an mmap(2)-like operation is not available for in_fd.
EIO: Unspecified error while reading from in_fd.
ENOMEM: Insufficient memory to read from in_fd.

VERSIONS

sendfile() is a new feature in Linux 2.2. The include file <sys/sendfile.h> is present since glibc 2.1.

CONFORMING TO

Not specified in POSIX.1-2001, or other standards.

Other Unix systems implement sendfile() with different semantics and prototypes. It should not be used in portable programs.

NOTES

If you plan to use sendfile() for sending files to a TCP socket, but need to send some header data in front of the file contents, you will find it useful to employ the TCP_CORK option, described in tcp(7), to minimize the number of packets and to tune performance.

In Linux 2.4 and earlier, out_fd could refer to a regular file, and sendfile() changed the current offset of that file.

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.