hosts(5) BSD File Formats Manual hosts(5)
NAME
hosts -- host name data base
DESCRIPTION
The hosts file contains information regarding the known hosts on the net-
work. For each host a single line should be present with the following
information:
Internet address
Official host name
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.
Network addresses may either be specified for IP version 4 or version 6.
IP version 4 addresses are specified in the conventional dotted address
notation. IP version 6 addresses are specified using the colon-separated
notation described in RFC1924.
Host names may contain any printable character other than a field delim-
iter, newline, or comment character.
INTERACTION WITH DIRECTORY SERVICES
Processes generally find host-related information using the routines
described in gethostent(3), getipnodebyname(3), getaddrinfo(3), and
getnameinfo(3). On Mac OS X, these functions interact with the
DirectoryService(8) daemon, which reads the /etc/hosts file as well as
searching other directory information services, most notably the Domain
Name System (DNS).
FILES
/etc/hosts
SEE ALSO
gethostent(3), getipnodebyname(3), getaddrinfo(3), getnameinfo(3),
DirectoryService(8)
RFC1924: A Compact Representation of IPv6 Addresses.
HISTORY
The hosts file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
4.2 Berkeley Distribution December 11, 1993 4.2 Berkeley Distribution
Mac OS X 10.6 - Generated Thu Sep 17 20:25:07 CDT 2009