[Bug-gnulib] Re: inet_r, xinet

[Simon Josefsson]

Bruno Haible <address@hidden> writes:

> Simon Josefsson wrote:
>> +char *inet_ntoa_r (struct in_addr in, char *buf);
>> +char *xinet_ntoa (struct in_addr in);
>
> Hi,
>
> I don't think we should, at this time, introduce new API that works only
> for IPv4 and doesn't work for other protocols like IPv6.

Makes sense.  OTOH, my use of this was in a DNS resolver code for A
records, which are IPv4 specific.  However...

> Can you rework this in such a way that the API becomes protocol independent
> (like the gethostbyaddr function is) and that the implementation supports
> IPv6?
>
> You can use the appended autoconf macros for detecting IPv4 and IPv6 support.
> Maybe you can also use the appended code from GNU clisp.

...when browsing around, I discovered POSIX has inet_ntop, a protocol
independent variant.  It uses fixed size buffers, so a simple
xinet_ntop wrapper seem like a good solution here.

But I realized it would be easier for me to remove the DNS resolver A
record parser code from my package, since I'm using getaddrinfo for
addresses.  I only needed the DNS parser for SRV records.

O well, these ideas are in the archives if someone wants to pursue it
in the future.

Thanks.