Net::protoent(3perl)					 Perl Programmers Reference Guide				      Net::protoent(3perl)

NAME

       Net::protoent - by-name interface to Perl's built-in getproto*() functions

SYNOPSIS

	use Net::protoent;
	$p = getprotobyname(shift || 'tcp') || die "no proto";
	printf "proto for %s is %d, aliases are %s
",
	   $p->name, $p->proto, "@{$p->aliases}";

	use Net::protoent qw(:FIELDS);
	getprotobyname(shift || 'tcp') || die "no proto";
	print "proto for $p_name is $p_proto, aliases are @p_aliases
";

DESCRIPTION

       This module's default exports override the core getprotoent(), getprotobyname(), and getnetbyport() functions, replacing them with versions
       that return "Net::protoent" objects.  They take default second arguments of "tcp".  This object has methods that return the similarly named
       structure field name from the C's protoent structure from netdb.h; namely name, aliases, and proto.  The aliases method returns an array
       reference, the rest scalars.

       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 "p_".  Thus, "$proto_obj->name()"
       corresponds to $p_name if you import the fields.  Array references are available as regular array variables, so for example "@{
       $proto_obj->aliases() }" would be simply @p_aliases.

       The getproto() function is a simple front-end that forwards a numeric argument to getprotobyport(), and the rest to getprotobyname().

       To access this functionality without the core overrides, pass the "use" an empty import list, and then access function functions with their
       full qualified names.  On the other hand, the built-ins are still available via the "CORE::" pseudo-package.

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 v5.14.2							    2010-12-30						      Net::protoent(3perl)