Net::hostent(3pm)                               Perl Programmers Reference Guide                               Net::hostent(3pm)



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

SYNOPSIS
        use Net::hostent;

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

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

       The gethost() function is a simple front-end that forwards a numeric argument to gethostbyaddr() by way of
       Socket::inet_aton, and the rest to gethostbyname().

       To access this functionality without the core overrides, pass the "use" an empty import list, and then access function
       functions with their full qualified names.  On the other hand, the built-ins are still available via 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::Struct module to build a struct-like class, you shouldn't rely
       upon this.

AUTHOR
       Tom Christiansen



perl v5.12.4                                               2011-06-01                                          Net::hostent(3pm)