You can use this function with any socket, whether or not it is in a connected state. It receives data sent by a call to sendmsg(), send(), or sendto(). The message is scattered into several user buffers if such buffers are specified. To receive data, the socket does not need to be connected to another socket. When the ioveciovcnt array specifies more than one buffer, the input data is scattered into iovcnt buffers as specified by the members of the iovec array: iov0, iov1, ..., ioviovcnt When a message is received, it is split among the buffers by filling the first buffer in the list, then the second, and so on, until either all of the buffers are full or there is no more data to be placed in the buffers. You can use the select() function to determine when more data arrives. Related Functions See also read(), send(), and socket().