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Net::hostent

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (3)
Updated: perl 5.004, patch 04
Index

NAME

Net::hostent - by-name interface to Perl's built-in gethost*() functions

SYNOPSIS

 use Net::hostnet;

DESCRIPTION

This module's default exports override the core gethostbyname() andgethostbyaddr() functions, replacing them with versions that return``Net::hostent'' objects. This object has methods that return the similarlynamed structure field name from the C's hostent structure from netdb.h;namely name, aliases, addrtype, length, and addr_list. The aliases andaddr_list methods return array reference, the rest scalars. The addrmethod is equivalent to the zeroth element in the addr_list arrayreference.

You may also import all the structure fields directly into your namespaceas regular variables using the :FIELDS import tag. (Note that this stilloverrides your core functions.) Access these fields as variables namedwith a preceding h_. Thus, $host_obj->name() corresponds to$h_name if you import the fields. Array references are available asregular array variables, so for example @{ $host_obj->aliases()} would be simply @h_aliases.

The gethost() funtion is a simple front-end that forwards a numericargument to gethostbyaddr() by way of Socket::inet_aton, and the restto gethostbyname().

To access this functionality without the core overrides,pass the use an empty import list, and then accessfunction functions with their full qualified names.On the other hand, the built-ins are still availablevia the CORE:: pseudo-package.

EXAMPLES

 use Net::hostent; use Socket;

 @ARGV = ('netscape.com') unless @ARGV;

 for $host ( @ARGV ) {

    unless ($h = gethost($host)) {        warn "$0: no such host: $host\n";        next;    }

    printf "\n%s is %s%s\n",             $host,             lc($h->name) eq lc($host) ? "" : "*really* ",            $h->name;

    print "\taliases are ", join(", ", @{$h->aliases}), "\n"                if @{$h->aliases};

    if ( @{$h->addr_list} > 1 ) {         my $i;        for $addr ( @{$h->addr_list} ) {            printf "\taddr #%d is [%s]\n", $i++, inet_ntoa($addr);        }     } else {        printf "\taddress is [%s]\n", inet_ntoa($h->addr);    }

    if ($h = gethostbyaddr($h->addr)) {        if (lc($h->name) ne lc($host)) {            printf "\tThat addr reverses to host %s!\n", $h->name;            $host = $h->name;            redo;        }     } }

NOTE

While this class is currently implemented using the Class::Structmodule to build a struct-like class, you shouldn't rely upon this.

AUTHOR

Tom Christiansen

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