I am writing a small webserver application in c and i wondered if i
could translate local addresses like "imac-dev.local" to a valid
sockaddr structure. I don't know if these addresses are used only on
Mac OS X, but i would like it to be as portable as possible (except for
windows), if this is the OS X style of local addresses, could someone
explain me how it is done in other *nixes ? I know about /etc/hosts but
i think there must be a better way. Any help is appreciated.

Hi Ruben,

gethostbyname() is your friend.

Regards ... Rainer

>I am writing a small webserver application in c and i wondered if i
>could translate local addresses like "imac-dev.local" to a valid
>sockaddr structure. 

Use the same method you use for non-local addresses:  gethostbyname().
Put the local names in DNS or /etc/hosts.

>I don't know if these addresses are used only on
>Mac OS X, but i would like it to be as portable as possible (except for
>windows), if this is the OS X style of local addresses, could someone
>explain me how it is done in other *nixes ? I know about /etc/hosts but
>i think there must be a better way. Any help is appreciated.

						Gordon L. Burditt

Gordon Burditt wrote:
>> I am writing a small webserver application in c and i wondered if i
>> could translate local addresses like "imac-dev.local" to a valid
>> sockaddr structure. 
> 
> Use the same method you use for non-local addresses:  gethostbyname().
> Put the local names in DNS or /etc/hosts.

Or, on Mac OS X, it might go into NetInfo instead.  (I'm going to guess
that's where stuff like imac-dev.local is stored.)

   - Logan

Okay thanks! I got it to work now.