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

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 geth-
     ostbyaddr() functions, replacing them with versions that return "Net::hos-
     tent" 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 argu-
     ment to gethostbyaddr() by way of Socket::inet_aton, and the rest to geth-
     ostbyname().

     To access this functionality without the core overrides, pass the "use" an
     empty import list, and then access function functions with their full qual-
     ified 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 v5.44.0			   2026-05-14			 Net::hostent(3)