Several classes described in this document have a member type native_handle_type, a member function native_handle, and member functions that return or accept arguments of type native_handle_type. The presence of these members and their semantics is implementation-defined.
When an operation has its effects specified as if by passing the result of native_handle() to a POSIX function the effect is as if native_handle_type is the type int.
[ Note: These members allow implementations to provide access to their implementation details. Their names are specified to facilitate portable compile-time detection. Actual use of these members is inherently non-portable. For operating systems that are based on POSIX, implementations can define the native_handle_type for sockets as int, representing the native file descriptor associated with the socket. — end note ]