protocols(5) BSD File Formats Manual protocols(5)
NAME
protocols -- protocol name data base
DESCRIPTION
The protocols file contains information regarding the known protocols
used in the DARPA Internet. For each protocol a single line should be
present with the following information:
official protocol name
protocol number
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.
Protocol names may contain any printable character other than a field
delimiter, newline, or comment character.
INTERACTION WITH DIRECTORY SERVICES
Processes generally find protocol records using one of the getprotoent(3)
family of functions. On Mac OS X, these functions interact with the
DirectoryService(8) daemon, which reads the /etc/protocols file as well
as searching other directory information services to determine protocol
name and number information.
FILES
/etc/protocols
SEE ALSO
getprotoent(3), DirectoryService(8)
HISTORY
The protocols file format appeared in 4.2BSD.
4.2 Berkeley Distribution June 5, 1993 4.2 Berkeley Distribution
Mac OS X 10.8 - Generated Sat Sep 1 14:42:18 CDT 2012