ADDR2ASCII(3)						   BSD Library Functions Manual 					     ADDR2ASCII(3)

NAME

     addr2ascii, ascii2addr -- Generic address formatting routines

LIBRARY

     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

     #include <arpa/inet.h>

     char *
     addr2ascii(int af, const void *addrp, int len, char *buf);

     int
     ascii2addr(int af, const char *ascii, void *result);

DESCRIPTION

     The routines addr2ascii() and ascii2addr() are used to convert network addresses between binary form and a printable form appropriate to the
     address family.  Both functions take an af argument, specifying the address family to be used in the conversion process.  (Currently, only
     the AF_INET and AF_LINK address families are supported.)

     The addr2ascii() function is used to convert binary, network-format addresses into printable form.  In addition to af, there are three other
     arguments.  The addrp argument is a pointer to the network address to be converted.  The len argument is the length of the address.  The buf
     argument is an optional pointer to a caller-allocated buffer to hold the result; if a null pointer is passed, addr2ascii() uses a statically-
     allocated buffer.

     The ascii2addr() function performs the inverse operation to addr2ascii().	In addition to af, it takes two arguments, ascii and result.  The
     ascii argument is a pointer to the string which is to be converted into binary.  The result argument is a pointer to an appropriate network
     address structure for the specified family.

     The following gives the appropriate structure to use for binary addresses in the specified family:

     AF_INET	  struct in_addr (in <arpa/inet.h>)
     AF_LINK	  struct sockaddr_dl (in <net/if_dl.h>)

     AF_INET and AF_LINK constants are defined in <sys/socket.h>

RETURN VALUES

     The addr2ascii() function returns the address of the buffer it was passed, or a static buffer if the a null pointer was passed; on failure,
     it returns a null pointer.  The ascii2addr() function returns the length of the binary address in bytes, or -1 on failure.

EXAMPLES

     The inet(3) functions inet_ntoa() and inet_aton() could be implemented thusly:

	   #include <sys/socket.h>
	   #include <arpa/inet.h>

	   char *
	   inet_ntoa(struct in_addr addr)
	   {
		   return addr2ascii(AF_INET, &addr, sizeof addr, 0);
	   }

	   int
	   inet_aton(const char *ascii, struct in_addr *addr)
	   {
		   return (ascii2addr(AF_INET, ascii, addr)
		       == sizeof(*addr));
	   }

     In actuality, this cannot be done because addr2ascii() and ascii2addr() are implemented in terms of the inet(3) functions, rather than the
     other way around.

ERRORS

     When a failure is returned, errno is set to one of the following values:

     [ENAMETOOLONG]	The addr2ascii() routine was passed a len argument which was inappropriate for the address family given by af.

     [EPROTONOSUPPORT]	Either routine was passed an af argument other than AF_INET or AF_LINK.

     [EINVAL]		The string passed to ascii2addr() was improperly formatted for address family af.

SEE ALSO

     inet(3), linkaddr(3), inet(4)

HISTORY

     An interface close to this one was originally suggested by Craig Partridge.  This particular interface originally appeared in the INRIA IPv6
     implementation.

AUTHORS

     Code and documentation by Garrett A. Wollman, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science.

BUGS

     The original implementations supported IPv6.  This support should eventually be resurrected.  The NRL implementation also included support
     for the AF_ISO and AF_NS address families.

     The genericity of this interface is somewhat questionable.  A truly generic interface would provide a means for determining the length of the
     buffer to be used so that it could be dynamically allocated, and would always require a ``struct sockaddr'' to hold the binary address.
     Unfortunately, this is incompatible with existing practice.  This limitation means that a routine for printing network addresses from arbi-
     trary address families must still have internal knowledge of the maximum buffer length needed and the appropriate part of the address to use
     as the binary address.

BSD
								   June 13, 1996							       BSD