PROTOCOLS(5)						      BSD File Formats Manual						      PROTOCOLS(5)

NAME

     protocols -- protocol name data base

DESCRIPTION

     The protocols file contains information regarding the known protocols used in the DARPA Internet.	For each protocol a single line should be
     present with the following information:

	   official protocol name
	   protocol number
	   aliases

     Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.  A ``#'' indicates the beginning of a comment; characters up to the end of
     the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file.

     Protocol names may contain any printable character other than a field delimiter, newline, or comment character.

INTERACTION WITH DIRECTORY SERVICES

     Processes generally find protocol records using one of the getprotoent(3) family of functions.  On Mac OS X, these functions interact with
     the DirectoryService(8) daemon, which reads the /etc/protocols file as well as searching other directory information services to determine
     protocol name and number information.

FILES

     /etc/protocols

SEE ALSO

     getprotoent(3), DirectoryService(8)

HISTORY

     The protocols file format appeared in 4.2BSD.

4.2 Berkeley Distribution					   June 5, 1993 					 4.2 Berkeley Distribution