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The Resolver Library

When talking of ``the resolver'', we do not mean any special application, but rather refer to the resolver library, a collection of functions that can be found in the standard C library. The central routines are gethostbyname(2) and gethostbyaddr(2) which look up all IP addresses belonging to a host, and vice versa. They may be configured to simply look up the information in hosts, query a number of name servers, or use the hosts database of NIS (Network Information Service). Other applications, like smail, may include different drivers for any of these, and need special care.


Andrew Anderson
Thu Mar 7 23:22:06 EST 1996