gethostbyname (deprecated) (Compact 2013)

3/26/2014

This function retrieves host information corresponding to a host name from a host database.

Note

The gethostbyname function has been deprecated by the introduction of the getaddrinfo function. Developers who create Windows Sockets 2 applications are urged to use the getaddrinfo function instead of gethostbyname.

Syntax

struct hostent FAR* gethostbyname(
  const char FAR* name 
);

Parameters

• name
  [out] Pointer to the null-terminated name of the host to resolve.

Return Value

If no error occurs, this function returns a pointer to the hostent structure. If an error occurs, it returns a NULL pointer, and a specific error number can be retrieved by calling WSAGetLastError.

The following table shows the possible error codes.

Error code	Description
WSANOTINITIALISED	A successful WSAStartup call must occur before using this function.
WSAENETDOWN	The network subsystem has failed.
WSAHOST_NOT_FOUND	An authoritative answer host was not found.
WSATRY_AGAIN	A nonauthoritative host was not found, or the server failure.
WSANO_RECOVERY	A nonrecoverable error occurred.
WSANO_DATA	A valid name exists, but no data record of the requested type exists.
WSAEINPROGRESS	A blocking Winsock call is in progress, or the service provider is still processing a callback function.
WSAEFAULT	The name parameter is not a valid part of the user address space.
WSAEINTR	The socket was closed.

Note

Japanese Version Winsock calls to get the machine IP address will fail if the machine name is entered in Japanese characters.

Remarks

This function returns a pointer to a hostent structure, which is a structure allocated by Windows Sockets. The hostent structure contains the results of a successful search for the host specified in the name parameter.

The application must never attempt to modify this structure or to free anything inside the structure.. Furthermore, only one copy of this structure is allocated per thread, so the application should copy any information it needs before issuing any other Windows Sockets function calls.

This function cannot resolve IP address strings passed to it. Such a request is treated exactly as if an unknown host name were passed. Use inet_addr to convert an IP address string to an actual IP address, then use another function, gethostbyaddr, to obtain the contents of the hostent structure.

The gethostbyname function resolves the string returned by a successful call to gethostname.

Requirements

Header	winsock2.h
Library	Ws2.lib

See Also

Reference

Socket Functions
gethostbyaddr (deprecated)
gethostname
hostent
inet_addr
WSAGetLastError
WSAStartup