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3 Answers

up vote 13 down vote

unix sockets are inter-process-communication mechanism that allows bidirectional data exchange between process running on the same machine.

while ip sockets [in special case tcp/ip] are mechanism allowing to communicate both between processes over the network. in special case you can use tcp-ip sockets to talk with processes running on the same computer [ by using the loopback interface ].

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Bronze this answer since it may have been the one to get you 10k. =) – WesleyDavid May 15 '10 at 22:09
up vote 2 down vote

you can list your own machine local unix sockets with

netstat -a -p --unix

have fun!

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Is there a similar command for windows? – apache Mar 20 '10 at 14:28
Unix sockets don't exist on Windows. netstat does however work on Windows. – Mark Tomlin Jul 17 '12 at 14:29
@apache, similar thing in Windows called "Named pipes". – ruslan Nov 1 '12 at 6:34
up vote -1 down vote

A unix socket can be used for both 'interprocess' and for tcp/ip (remote) connections.

http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Sockets.html#Sockets

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