What are .sock files and how to communicate with them

Julian Simpson · 10-01-2018, 06:02 PM

What are .sock files?
How can I communicate with a .sock file?

Elaborating on the 2nd bullet, I understand that .sock files are for Inter-process communication. How can I 'communicate' with them? Let us say a sock file is designed to respond in a specific way (For ex: it takes the input 'time' and prints out the current time).

I prefer higher level programming languages (python) more than C/C++ . It'd also be better if someone can point me to some application (like nc maybe?) that I can use to communicate with .sock files in a quick and dirty way?

Thanks

scasey · 10-01-2018, 06:49 PM

I put your first bullet into my favorite search engine and got hundreds of links with answers to that question.

Try that, then check back here if you need clarification of anything.

frankbell · 10-01-2018, 08:07 PM

sock is usually short for "socket."

You might start with man socket. Generally, though, sockets are not designed to be communicated with directly by user.

Later:

This post appeared on LQ after I wrote this. It seems relevant to this thread: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ts-4175639550/

ondoho · 10-02-2018, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julian Simpson

What are .sock files?

they are files that have the string ".sock" in their name?

ok, i guess you mean sockets, but keep in mind that a file does not need to have ".sock" in its name to be a socket.