Thread: (WINSOCK) Confusion with printing Errors - WSAGetLastError or iResult?

  1. #1
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    Feb 2014
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    (WINSOCK) Confusion with printing Errors - WSAGetLastError or iResult?

    Hello, noobie here.

    Currently learning winsock programming from MSDN Microsoft pages. In their example, they use the following:

    Code:
    // Resolve the local address and port to be used by the server
    iResult = getaddrinfo(NULL, DEFAULT_PORT, &hints, &result);
    if (iResult != 0) {
        printf("getaddrinfo failed: %d\n", iResult);
        WSACleanup();
        return 1;
    }
    and

    Code:
        iResult = bind( ListenSocket, result->ai_addr, (int)result->ai_addrlen);
        if (iResult == SOCKET_ERROR) {
            printf("bind failed with error: %d\n", WSAGetLastError());
            freeaddrinfo(result);
            closesocket(ListenSocket);
            WSACleanup();
            return 1;
        }
    My problem here is, in the first code, the program prints "iResult" if there was to be an error whereas the second code prints WSAGetLastError(). Why is it like this? Also when is it appropriate to do one over the other?

    Complete Source Code found here:
    Complete Winsock Server Code (Windows)

    Kind regards.

  2. #2
    train spotter
    Join Date
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    If in doubt, check the meaning of the return value in MSDN.

    getaddrinfo() returns WSAGetLastError() (so you dont have to call it) but bind() only returns success / fail.

    Why are they different?
    Remember this is Microsoft, where there is ERROR_SUCCESS (0)

    Quote Originally Posted by MSDN
    Bind()
    If no error occurs, bind returns zero. Otherwise, it returns SOCKET_ERROR, and a specific error code can be retrieved by calling WSAGetLastError.

    getaddrinfo()
    Success returns zero. Failure returns a nonzero Windows Sockets error code, as found in the Windows Sockets Error Codes.
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