society

n 1: an extended social group having a distinctive cultural and

economic organization

2: a formal association of people with similar interests; "he

joined a golf club"; "they formed a small lunch society";

"men from the fraternal order will staff the soup kitchen

today" [syn: {club}, {guild}, {gild}, {lodge}, {order}]

3: the state of being with someone; "he missed their company";

"he enjoyed the society of his friends" [syn: {company}, {comradeship},

{companionship}, {good fellowship}, {fellowship}]

4: the fashionable elite [syn: {high society}, {beau monde}, {smart

set}, {bon ton}]

socket

The {Berkeley Unix} mechansim for creating a

virtual connection between processes. Sockets interface

{Unix}'s {standard I/O} with its {network} communication

facilities. They can be of two types, stream (bi-directional)

or {datagram} (fixed length destination-addressed messages).

The socket library function socket() creates a communications

end-point or socket and returns a {file descriptor} with which

to access that socket. The socket has associated with it a

socket address, consisting of a {port} number and the local

host's network address.

{Unix manual page}: socket(2).

(1995-01-31)