GETSERVENT

Section: Linux Programmer's Manual (3)
Updated: 2008-08-19
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

getservent, getservbyname, getservbyport, setservent, endservent - get service entry  

SYNOPSIS

#include <netdb.h>

struct servent *getservent(void);

struct servent *getservbyname(const char *name, const char *proto);

struct servent *getservbyport(int port, const char *proto);

void setservent(int stayopen);

void endservent(void);
 

DESCRIPTION

The getservent() function reads the next entry from the services database (see services(5)) and returns a servent structure containing the broken-out fields from the entry. A connection is opened to the database if necessary.

The getservbyname() function returns a servent structure for the entry from the database that matches the service name using protocol proto. If proto is NULL, any protocol will be matched. A connection is opened to the database if necessary.

The getservbyport() function returns a servent structure for the entry from the database that matches the port port (given in network byte order) using protocol proto. If proto is NULL, any protocol will be matched. A connection is opened to the database if necessary.

The setservent() function opens a connection to the database, and sets the next entry to the first entry. If stayopen is nonzero, then the connection to the database will not be closed between calls to one of the getserv*() functions.

The endservent() function closes the connection to the database.

The servent structure is defined in <netdb.h> as follows: 

struct servent {
    char  *s_name;       /* official service name */
    char **s_aliases;    /* alias list */
    int    s_port;       /* port number */
    char  *s_proto;      /* protocol to use */
}

The members of the servent structure are:

s_name
The official name of the service.
s_aliases
A NULL-terminated list of alternative names for the service.
s_port
The port number for the service given in network byte order.
s_proto
The name of the protocol to use with this service.
 

RETURN VALUE

The getservent(), getservbyname() and getservbyport() functions return a pointer to a statically allocated servent structure, or a NULL pointer if an error occurs or the end of the file is reached.  

FILES

/etc/services
services database file
 

CONFORMING TO

4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.  

SEE ALSO

getnetent(3), getprotoent(3), getservent_r(3), services(5)  

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 3.27 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
RETURN VALUE
FILES
CONFORMING TO
SEE ALSO
COLOPHON
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Time: 19:49:21 GMT, April 27, 2011