ENDHOSTENT(3P) POSIX Programmer's Manual ENDHOSTENT(3P)PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux
implementation of this interface may differ (consult the corresponding
Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
endhostent, gethostent, sethostent — network host database functions
SYNOPSIS
#include <netdb.h>
void endhostent(void);
struct hostent *gethostent(void);
void sethostent(int stayopen);
DESCRIPTION
These functions shall retrieve information about hosts. This informa‐
tion is considered to be stored in a database that can be accessed
sequentially or randomly. The implementation of this database is
unspecified.
Note: In many cases this database is implemented by the Domain Name
System, as documented in RFC 1034, RFC 1035, and RFC 1886.
The sethostent() function shall open a connection to the database and
set the next entry for retrieval to the first entry in the database. If
the stayopen argument is non-zero, the connection shall not be closed
by a call to gethostent(), and the implementation may maintain an open
file descriptor.
The gethostent() function shall read the next entry in the database,
opening and closing a connection to the database as necessary.
Entries shall be returned in hostent structures.
The endhostent() function shall close the connection to the database,
releasing any open file descriptor.
These functions need not be thread-safe.
RETURN VALUE
Upon successful completion, the gethostent() function shall return a
pointer to a hostent structure if the requested entry was found, and a
null pointer if the end of the database was reached or the requested
entry was not found.
The application shall not modify the structure to which the return
value points, nor any storage areas pointed to by pointers within the
structure. The returned pointer, and pointers within the structure,
might be invalidated or the structure or the storage areas might be
overwritten by a subsequent call to gethostent().
ERRORS
No errors are defined for endhostent(), gethostent(), and sethostent().
The following sections are informative.
EXAMPLES
None.
APPLICATION USAGE
None.
RATIONALE
None.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSOendservent()
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2008, <netdb.h>
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
-- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri‐
cal and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is
POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online
at http://www.unix.org/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are
most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
files to man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.ker‐
nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2013 ENDHOSTENT(3P)
