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Comment by jap | Hacker News Reader

Looks like that function is marked as obsolete, anyone know how long that's been the case?

https://www.mankier.com/3/gethostbyname

"The gethostbyname(), gethostbyaddr(), herror(), and hstrerror() functions are obsolete. Applications should use getaddrinfo(3), getnameinfo(3), and gai_strerror(3) instead."

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For a long time: getaddrinfo() and others are specified in susv3[1] (since 2003 I think). However, gethostbyname() and gethostbyaddr() are still very commonly used, and won't be gone soon.

1/ http://refspecs.linuxbase.org/LSB_3.1.1/LSB-Core-generic/LSB...

The main reason gethostbyname is deprecated is that it doesn't support IPv6. The implementation of getaddrinfo uses gethostbyname, so you're using it either way.

Well, Ulrich Drepper has been trying to get people to stop using it since 2007: https://udrepper.livejournal.com/16116.html

And not just because of IPv6.

That seems like a weak argument. It's still going to do the wrong thing when the local machine has a 10.x.x.x address and the local server has a 172.16.x.x address. The right solution is for the local admin to have the local DNS server return only the local address for local clients.

getaddrinfo() is also a much more complicated function than gethostbyname(). If you need the extra features, fine. If you're writing new code, fine. But going back and trying to update existing code is just going to introduce new bugs.

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